We examine the conditions under which competitive equilibria can be obtained as the limit, when the number of strategic traders gets large, of Nash equilibria in economies with asymmetric information on agents' effort and possibly imperfect observability of agents' trades. Convergence always...

In this article we show that in the presence of trading constraints, such as short sale constraints, the standard definition of a Rational Expectations Equilibrium allows for equilibrium prices that reveal information unknown to any active trader in the market. We propose a new definition of the...

The objective of this note is to analyze some implications of the model of commodity money described in Banerjee and Maskin (1996) which may seem paradoxical. In order to do this, we incorporate a general production cost structure into the model. We focus on two different results. First, the...

We analyze risk sharing and fiscal spending in a two-region model with complete markets. Fiscal policy determines tax rates for each state of nature. When fiscal policy is decentralized, it can be used to affect prices of securities. To manipulate prices to their beneffit, regions choose...

Price bubbles in an Arrow-Debreu valuation equilibrium in infinite-time economy are a manifestation of lack of countable additivity of valuation of assets. In contrast, known examples of price bubbles in sequential equilibrium in infinite time cannot be attributed to the lack of countable...

Researchers have used stylized facts on asset prices and trading volume in stock markets (in particular, the mean reversion of asset returns and the correlations between trading volume, price changes and price levels) to support theories where agents are not rational expected utility maximizers....

The classic theory of fiscal federalism suggests that different people should have different governments. Yet, separate local governments with homogeneous constituents often end up doing poorly. This paper explains why and answers three questions: when regions are heterogeneous, what determines...

Many models in the economics literature deal with strategic situations with privately informed agents. In those models the information structure is assumed to be exogenous and common knowledge. We consider whether such models, and the results they produce, are robust with respect the...

The earning structure in science is known to be flat relative to the one in the private sector, which could cause a brain drain toward the private sector. In this paper, we assume that agents value both money and fame and study the role of the institution of science in the allocation of talent...

Interviewing in professional labor markets is a costly process for firms. Moreover, poor screening can have a persistent negative impact on firms’ bottom lines and candidates’ careers. In a simple dynamic model where firms can pay a cost to interview applicants who have private information...