During the financial crisis, life insurers sold long-term policies at deep discounts relative to actuarial value. The average markup was as low as -19 percent for annuities and -57 percent for life insurance. This extraordinary pricing behavior was due to financial and product market frictions,...

The behavior of artificial intelligences algorithms (AIAs) is shaped by how they learn about their environment. We compare the prices generated by AIAs that use different learning protocols when there is market interaction. Asynchronous learning occurs when the AIA only learns about the return...

This study explores empirically the price dynamics within two distinct market institutions - a double oral auction, which resembles modern asset markets, and a bilateral exchange market, which represents markets that have existed for centuries. To provide a theoretical basis to our...

We complete the study of comparative statics initiated in Caplin and Leahy [2010], which introduced a new mathematical apparatus for understanding NTU allocation markets, as such covering the housing market and other markets for large indivisible goods. We introduce homotopy methods to...

In recent years, cases in which state governments chose to override federal environmental regulation with tighter regulations of their own have become increasingly common, even for pollutants that have substantial spillovers across states. This paper argues that this change arose at least in...

The interaction between offenders and potential victims has so far received relatively little attention in the literature on the economics of crime. The main objective of this paper is twofold: to extend the "market for offenses model" to deal with both "product" and "factor" markets, and to...

Inventories and price changes are correlated. The inverse relation is most obvious in housing where inventories build in low demand markets and shrink in high demand markets. This is a puzzle. Symmetry of information among buyers and sellers would seem to imply that sellers would change their...