Following tournament theory, incentives will be rather low if the contestants of a tournament are heterogeneous. We empirically test this prediction using a large dataset from the German Hockey League. Our results show that indeed the intensity of a game is lower if the teams are more...

Consumer bankruptcy regulation in the United States as well as in many other countries allow consumers to petition for a partial debt discharge. Usually, a debt release is possible when the debtor behaves in the creditors’ best interest and after filing for bankruptcy signs over her entire...

This paper examines the positions of Coase and Pigou in regard to the problem of external effects (externalities). Assessing their two most important works, it appears that Coase has a more relevant preference for an evaluation of total efficiency, while Pigou, with some exceptions, is convinced...

This article analyses the effect of security price on the behaviour of bank securitization. We present a model of bank securitization in which security price together with liquid constraints create the incentive for banks to originate and sell assets backed securities to investors. Banks have a...

This paper aims at empirically investigating the role of moral hazard in the e¢ ctivity of deposit insurance in achieving banking stability. If the negative e¤ect of deposit insurance on banking stability is through moral hazard, then deposit insurance will be associated with banking...

We show experimentally that fairness concerns may have a decisive impact on the actual and optimal choice of contracts in a moral hazard context. Bonus contracts that offer a voluntary and unenforceable bonus for satisfactory performance provide powerful incentives and are superior to explicit...

We modify the Diamond-Dybvig [3] model studied in Green and Lin [5] to incorporate a self-interested banker who has a private record-keeping technology. A public record-keeping device does not exist. We find that there is a trade-off between sophisticated contracts that possess relatively good...

We revisit the signalling hypothesis, whereby potential employers use the duration of unemployment as a signal as to the productivity of applicants. We suggest that the quality of such a signal is very low when the unemployed receive unemployment benefits: individuals have good reasons to remain...

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby reduce asymmetric information. With perfect risk classification, premiums fully reflect the expected cost associated...