This paper explores the persistence of financial dollarization in a group of 79 economies with different levels of development. Our main hypothesis is that a high level of domestic debt combined with default risk explains this persistence, even after a decline in inflation rates. Using the...

The present paper develops a simple asymmetrical informational model that allows us to understand the individual´s willingness to participate in a strike. We develop and compare two signaling models of strikes: in one, firms are able to monitor and enforce hours and offer different workweeks to...

The present paper aims at explaining strike incidence, measured by the proportion of strikers observed in each sector, and strike severeness, proxied by a measure of mean strike hours lost per worker in each industry. We find that Industry concentration dissuades striking – more concentrated...

Background. In Spain's "MIR" system of allocating residency training positions, medical school graduates are ranked according to their performance on a national exam and then sequentially choose from the remaining available training slots. We studied how changes in the MIR system might address...

This paper studies equilibria for economies characterized by moral hazard (hidden action), in which the set of contracts marketed in equilibrium is determined by the interaction of financial intermediaries. The crucial aspect of the environment that we study is that intermediaries are restricted...

We show that direct investments by consumers without the use of financial intermediaries can efficiently allocate financial capital to firms seeking funding for production of a novel consumption good. In our setting, consumers are also investors, and their privately known consumption preferences...

We survey the literature analysing the price formation and trading process, and the consequences of market organization for price discovery and welfare. We develop a united perspective on theoretical, empirical and experimental approaches. We discuss the evidence on transaction costs and the...

We use a controlled economic experiment to examine the implications of asymmetric information for informational linkages between a stock market and a traded call option on that stock. The setting is based on the Kyle model and Back (1993). We find that an insider trades aggressively in both the...

This paper examines the use of credit derivatives by US bank holding companies from 1999 to 2003 with assets in excess of one billion dollars. Using the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Bank Holding Company Database, we find that in 2003 only 19 large banks out of 345 use credit derivatives....