Does improving creditor coordination by strengthening CACs lead to efficiency gains in the functioning of sovereign bond markets? We address this question in a model featuring both debtor moral hazard and creditor coordination under incomplete information. Conditional on default, we characterize...

We analyze whether or not the globalization of capital, `disciplines' governments and improves gov- ernance. We demonstrate that globalization a ects governance, by increasing a country's vulnerability to sudden capital ight. This increased threat of capital ight can discipline governments and...

This paper provides an axiomatic characterization of choices in a setting where a decision-maker may not fully internalize all the consequences of her choices on herself. Such a departure from rationality, it turns out, is common across a variety of positive behavioral models and admits the...

Bank crises, by interrupting liquidity provision, have been viewed as resulting in welfare losses. In a model of banking with moral hazard, we show that second best bank contracts that improve on autarky ex-ante require costly crises to occur with positive probability at the interim stage. When...

What are the normative implications of behavioral economics? We study a model where the decisions a person makes, consciously or unconsciously, affect her psychological state (reference point, beliefs, expectations, self-image) which, in turn, impacts on her ranking over available decisions in...

The Industrial Revolution is often characterized as the culmination of a process of commercialisation; however, the precise nature of such a link remains unclear. This paper models and analyses one such link: the impact of a higher degree of anonymity of market transactions on relative factor...

Do unilateral measures to cut emissions provide an adequate foundation for global climate change negotiations from a post-Copenhagen perspective? We document the extent and variety for unilateral measures. In a formal model, we examine the conditions under which global learning, by building on...

This paper contrasts the normative implications of a model of decisionmaking with endogenous frames to those of choice theoretic models of Bernheim and Rangel (2007, 2009) and Rubinstein and Salant (2008) in which observed choices are determined by exogenous frames or ancillary conditions. We...

This paper models the role of internal constraints in causing aspirations failure at the individual level. It shows how initial disadvantage increases the likelihood of binding internal constraints and hence aspirations failure, thus suggesting a new behavioral explanation for poverty traps. In...

We study the public policy implications of a model in which agents do not fully internalize all the conscequences of their actions. Such a model unifies seemingly disconected models with behavioral agents. We evaluate the scope of paternalistic and libertarian-parternalistic policies in the...