We compare the transmission of fiscal shocks in four OECD countries and in the Euro area. Fiscal shocks are identified in a SVAR by the restrictions that disturbances to government consumption, government investment and government employment increase output and deficits contemporaneously. These...

Site licensing of electronic journals has been revolutionizing the way academic information is distributed. However, many librarians are concerned about the possibility that commercial publishers might abuse site licensing by practicing bundling. In this paper, we analyze how bundling afects...

We study a retail benchmarking approach to determine access prices for interconnected networks. Instead of considering fixed access charges as in the existing literature, we study access pricing rules that determine the access price that network i pays to network j as a linear function of the...

In this paper, we study how access pricing affects network competition when subscription demand is elastic and each network uses non-linear prices and can apply termination-based price discrimination. In the case of a fixed per minute termination charge, we find that a reduction of the...

We re-examine the literature on mobile termination in the presence of network externalities. Externalities arise when firms discriminate between on- and off-net calls or when subscription demand is elastic. This literature predicts that profit decreases and consumer surplus increases in...

In this paper we present a model of oligopoly and financial constraints. We study allocations which are bankruptcy-free (BF) in the sense that no firm can drive another firm to bankruptcy without becoming bankrupt. We show how such allocations can be sustained as an equilibrium of a dynamic...

This expository paper describes the factors that contribute to failure of health insurance markets, and the regulatory mechanisms that have been and can be used to combat these failures. Standardized contracts and creditable coverage mandates are discussed, along with premium support, enrollment...

We introduce rule-of-thumb consumers in an otherwise standard dynamic sticky price model, and show how their presence can change dramatically the properties of widely used interest rate rules. In particular, the existence of a unique equilibrium is no longer guaranteed by an interest rate rule...

This paper investigates the effects of government spending on the real exchange rate and the trade balance in the US using a new VAR identification procedure based on spending forecast revisions. I find that the real exchange rate appreciates and the trade balance deteriorates after a government...

We obtain the following results. (ii) Both supply and demand shocks are important sources of fluctuations; supply prevails for GDP, while demand prevails for employment and information. (ii) Policy matters: Both monetary and fiscal policy shocks have sizeable effects on output and prices, with...