This paper shows that in a non-representative agent model in which households face short selling constraints and labor income risk, in the form of both uninsurable shocks and a common aggregate component, small differences in the correlation between aggregate labor income shocks and domestic and...

We analyze a dual currency search model in which agents are allowed to hold multiple units of both currencies. Hence, agents hold portfolios of currency. We study equilibria in which the two currencies are identical and equilibria in which the two currencies differ according to the magnitude of...

This paper offers two main contributions. First, it shows how the Baxter and Jermann (1997) claim that, once we consider human capital risk, the international diversification puzzle is worse than we think, is based on an econometric misspecification rejected by the data. Second, it outlines how,...

With the Euro now a physical reality, Richard Layard argues that the economic case for Britain joining Euro-land is overwhelming.

Subjects who overestimate their performance in experimental tasks unrelated to travel are less willing to insure against failing in the task and also less inclined to buy travel insurance. This suggests intrinsic optimism influences insurance demand and diminishes adverse selection

In a world where rational individuals may hold different prior beliefs, a sender can influence the behavior of a receiver by controlling the informativeness of a signal. We characterize the set of distributions of posterior beliefs that can be induced by a signal, and provide necessary and...

This paper studies the optimal allocation of decision rights between an uninformed principal and an informed agent when interdependent activities need to be adapted to local conditions. While the principal cares only about overall profits the agent may favor higher, or lower, levels for each...

We analyze a class of sender-receiver games with quadratic payoffs, which includes the communication games in Alonso, Dessein and Matouschek (2008) and Rantakari (2008) as special cases, for which the receiver's maximum expected payoff when players have access to arbitrary, mediated...

We examine how cheap talk communication between managers within the same firm depends on the type of decisions that the firm makes. A firm consists of a headquarters and two operating divisions. Headquarters is unbiased but does not know the demand conditions in the divisions' markets. Each...

I present a model of social learning over an exogenous, directed network that may be readily nested within broader macroeconomic models with dispersed information and combines the attributes that agents (a) act repeatedly and simultaneously; (b) are Bayes-rational; and (c) have strategic...