Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the presence and importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major...

The aim of this work is to specify, accept or reject a priori assumption of a positive synergy in economic cluster development, to propose à quantitative assessment of synergy and à description of the interaction process among enterprises in the cluster. There are presented arguments in...

Building on the idea that religious communities provide mutual insurance against some idiosyncratic risks, we argue that religious membership is more valuable in societies exposed to greater common risk. In our empirical analysis we exploit rainfall risk as a source of common economic risk in...

This paper shows that an asymmetric group debt contract, where one borrower co-signs for another, but not vice versa, leads to heterogeneous matching. The analysis suggests that micro finance organizations can achieve the first best by offering asymmetric group contracts.

Most decisions involve variability in two dimensions: uncertainty across states of nature and fluctuations over time. The stakes involved in tradeoffs between these variability dimensions are especially high for the poor who have difficulty managing and recovering from shocks. We assume Epstein...

This paper examines the role of cooperativeness and impatience in the exploitation of common pool resources (CPRs) by combining laboratory experiments with field data. We study fishermen whose main, and often only, source of income stems from the use of fishing grounds with open access. The...

We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil...

A multinational corporation engages in foreign direct investment for the extraction of a natural resource in a developing country. The corporation bears the initial investment and earns as a return a share of the profits. The host country provides access and guarantees conditions of operation....

In the 'Knightian' theory of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs provide insurance to workers by paying fixed wages and bear all the risk of production. This paper endogenizes entrepreneurial risk by allowing for optimal insurance contracts as well as the occupational self-selection. Moral hazard...

Interest in prediction markets has increased in the last decade, driven in part by the hope that these markets will prove to be valuable tools in forecasting, decision-making and risk management - in both the public and private sectors. This paper outlines five open questions in the literature,...