Author of the acclaimed work Iceberg Risk: An Adventure in Portfolio Theory, Kent Osband argues that uncertainty is central rather than marginal to finance. Markets don't trade mainly on changes in risk. They trade on changes in beliefs about risk, and in the process, markets unite, stretch, and...

Standard axiomatizations of expected-utility theory envision an agent with fixed probability assessments who can be observed to choose actions from varying opportunity sets (for instance, pairs of lotteries). These axiomatizations also envision that the agent's preferences among these actions...

Prices on some Department of Defense (DoD) procurement contracts are determined by competitive bids, while on others prices are negotiated on the basis of so-called "DoD profit policy," whereby price is equated to expected cost plus a percentage markup. This article focuses on the interaction...

An agent of unknown expertise is requested to forecast the mean of an uncertain outcome. The agent can refine forecasts at a constant marginal cost per unit precision, but neither cost nor precision can be verified by the planner. The problem is to induce both truthful revelation and an...

It is not unusual for reforming socialist economies to relax wage controls without hardening budget constraints on enterprises or freeing consumer goods prices. This policy can be dangerously destabilizing. While higher wages permit workers to purchase more of some goods, they also tend to...

When a formerly centrally planned economy frees prices and allows or compels producers to respond to market signals, conventional measures tend to severely overstate short-run output decline and inflation. The overstatement stems partly from neglect of private sector activity or belated...

This paper provides an analytic overview of independent currency authorities (ICAs), sometimes called currency boards. ICAs issue and redeem domestic currency on demand against an exchange standard and back such operations through a 100 percent marginal foreign reserve cover. They also impose...