We propose a model in which firms involved in trading securities overinvest in financial expertise. Intermediaries or traders in the model meet and bargain over a financial asset. As in the bargaining model in Dang (2008), counterparties endogenously decide whether to acquire information, and...

We consider a tax competition game between asymmetrically un-informed governments. Two governments simultaneously propose tax arrangements to attract a multinational firm (MNF) which has an ex-ante preference to operate in both countries, and governments anticipate that once the MNF accepts...

Abstract: Many optimal contracting papers use quasi-linear preferences. To exclude stochastic mechanisms they impose a (sufficient) condition on how the curvature of an agent's objective function varies with type. We show with quasi-linear preferences that an optimal deterministic outcome...

This paper studies how credit constraints develop over bank relationships. I analyze a unique dataset of matched loan application and loan contract information and measure credit constraints as the ratio of requested to granted loan amounts. I find that the most important determinants of...

We exploit detailed data on approved and rejected small business loans to assess the impact of the introduction of a credit registry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our findings are threefold. First, mandatory information sharing tightens lending at the extensive margin as more applications are...

In a simple model of resource depletion (isoelastic demand and constant unit extraction cost), we fully characterize the set of linear effiency-inducing tax/subsidy schemes. We show that this set is infinite and all the larger as the cost of extraction is low. Depending on the magnitude of the...

In order to explore the optimal taxation of low-skilled labor, we extend the standard model of optimal non-linear income taxation in the presence of quasi-linear preferences in leisure by allowing for involuntary unemployment, job search, an exogenous welfare benefit, and a non-utilitarian...