We model the impact credit constraints and market risk have on the vertical relationships between firms in the supply chain. Firms which might face credit constraints in future investments become endogenously risk averse when accumulating pledgable income. In the short run, the optimal supply...

We endogenize the market risk (at given technical risk) in firms’ R&D decisions by introducing stochastic R&D in the Hotelling model. It is shown that if the technical risk is sufficiently high, the market risk remains low even if firms pursue similar projects. This leads firms to focus on the...

Economic theory is often abused in practical policy-making. There is frequently excessive focus on sophisticated theory at the expense of elementary theory; too much economic knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing. Too little attention is paid to the wider economic context, and to the...

Social preference research has fundamentally changed the way economists think about many important economic and social phenomena. However, the empirical foundation of social preferences is largely based on laboratory experiments with self-selected students as participants. This is potentially...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

The dangers of shouting ``fire'' in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features, and I analyze why people crowd into theaters and trades, why they run, what determines the...

Financial crises are associated with reduced volumes and extreme levels of rates for term inter-bank transactions, such as in one-month and three-month LIBOR markets. We provide an explanation of such stress in term lending by modelling leveraged banks’ precautionary demand for liquidity. When...