What makes e-money more special than cash? Is the introduction of e-money necessarily welfare enhancing? Is an e-money system necessarily stable? What is the optimal way to design an efficient and stable e-money scheme? This paper provides a first attempt to develop a micro-founded, dynamic,...

Using the prices of crude oil futures contracts, we construct the term structure of crude oil convenience yields out to one-year maturity. The crude oil convenience yield can be interpreted as the interest rate, denominated in barrels of oil, for borrowing a single barrel of oil, and it measures...

A default in the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) occurs when a Direct Clearer is unable to settle its final obligation. In August 2012, the Canadian Payments Association amended the ACSS by-law and rules to repeal the unwinding provisions from the ACSS default framework. Without...

This paper studies the efficiency of financial intermediation through securitization in a model with heterogeneous investment projects and asymmetric information about the quality of securitized assets. I show that when retaining part of the risk, the issuer of securitized assets may credibly...

We investigate the relationship between immigrant status and mortgage delinquency in the United States. We find that after controlling for observables, newly arrived immigrants are likely to have a higher delinquency rate on mortgages than natives, while immigrants who have resided in the United...

Can regulation solve problems arising from a natural monopoly? This paper analyzes whether “unbundling,” referring to regulations that enforce sharing of natural monopolistic infrastructure, prevents entrants from building new infrastructure. It models and estimates a dynamic entry game to...

This paper constructs a theory of the coexistence of fixed-term and permanent employment contracts in an environment with ex-ante identical workers and employers. Workers under fixed-term contracts can be dismissed at no cost while permanent employees enjoy labor protection. In a labor market...