To improve the detection of the economic ”danger zones” from which severe banking crises emanate, this paper introduces classification tree ensembles to the banking crisis forecasting literature. I show that their out-of-sample performance in forecasting binary banking crisis indicators...

In this paper, we report on a series of free-form bargaining experiments in which two players have to distribute four indivisible goods among themselves. In one treatment the monetary payoffs associated with each bundle of goods are common knowledge; in a second treatment only the ordinal ranking...

It is shown how one can effectively use cross-section data in modelling the change over time in aggregate consumption expenditure of a heterogeneous population. The starting point of our aggregation analysis is a dynamic behavioral relation on the household level. Based on certain hypotheses on...

Let S=(S_t), t=0,1,...,T (T being finite), be an adapted R^d-valued process. Each component process of S might be interpreted as the price process of a certain security. A trading strategy H=(H_t), t= 1,...,T, is a predictable R^d-valued process. A strategy H is called extreme if it represents a...

We report results of experiments designed to test the predictions of the best reply process. In a Cournot oligopoly with four firms, the best reply process should theoretically explode if demand and cost functions are linear. We find, however, no experimental evidence of such instability....

Pricing and hedging of long-term interest rate sensitive products require to extrapolate the term structure beyond observable maturities. For the resulting limiting term structure we show two results by postulating no arbitrage in a bond market with infinitely increasing maturities: long...

I consider a situation, where the agent can acquire payoff-relevant information either before or after the contract is signed. To raise efficiency, the principal might solicit information; to retain all surplus, however, she must prevent precontractual information gathering. The following class...

The paper addresses the problem of optimally matching heterogeneous players in a two-stage two-type Lazear-Rosen tournament in which the semifinal losers are eliminated. The organizer of the tournament can either choose two homogeneous semifinals -- one between two strong players and the other...

We study the effect of secondary markets on equity-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. The policyholders are assumed to be boundedly rational in giving up their contracts, and a proportion of policyholders will access the secondary markets instead of surrendering the...

This paper analyzes the sequential admissions procedure for medical subjects at public universities in Germany. Complete information equilibrium outcomes are shown to be characterized by a \emph{stability} condition that is adapted to the \emph{institutional constraints} of the German system. I...