We provide a model that explains the following empirical observations: i) private ownership is more efficient than public ownership, ii) privatizations are associated with increases in efficiency and iii) the increase in efficiency predates the privatization. The two key mechanisms explaining...

Forward sales is a credible commitment to aggressive spot market bidding, and it mitigates producers’ market power in electricity markets. Still it can be profitable for a producer to make such a commitment if it results in a soft response from competitors in the spot market (strategies are...

In this paper we show, theoretically and empirically, that stronger employment protection legislation (EPL) in a host country has important and differing effects on the various activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using micro data on affiliates to Swedish multinational firms in 20...

No abstract.

In this paper we extend models of “search market equilibrium” to incorporate general equilibrium considerations. The model we treat is one with a single product market and a single labor market. Imperfectly informed individuals follow optimal strategies in searching for a suitably low price...

How are inflation and unemployment related in the long run? Are they negatively correlated, as in the so-called naive Phillips curve theories or uncorrelated, "as in the neo-liberals' view or are they positively correlated as Friedman suggested in his Nobel lecture? <p> In this paper inflation is...</p>

Post World War II European welfare states experienced several decades of relatively low unemployment, followed by a plague of persistently high unemployment since the 1980's. We impute the higher unemployment to welfare states' diminished ability to cope with more turbulent economic times, such...

This paper develops a simple general equilibrium model with sequential search in which a non-degenerate wage offer distribution is endogenously determined. We use this model to analyze the comparative statics effects of increases in unemployment compensation on the unemployment rate and...