We investigate the causal impact of public discourse on socially responsible market behavior. We conduct laboratory market experiments with products that differ in their production costs and social impact, and provide market actors and impacted third parties with the opportunity to discuss...

This paper studies the evolution of hurricane insurance in Florida over the last decades. Hurricanes (and other natural catastrophes) are typically referred to as uninsurableʺ risks. The more exposed property owners find it difficult to obtain insurance cover from the private market and/or can...

The objective of this paper is to show how the same market failures that contribute to urban sprawl also contribute to urban blight. The paper develops a simple dynamic model in which new suburban and older central-city properties compete for mobile residents. The level of housing services...

Many economists believe that the stock market plays an important role in efficiently allocating capital to its most productive uses. This standard story of the stock market was called into question by events in the late 1990s, when some observers believed that stock market overvaluation - or a...

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks...

In this paper we investigate optimal harvesting of a renewable natural resource. While in the standard approach the resource is located at a single point in space we allow for the resource to be distributed over the plane. Consequently, an agent who exploits the resource has to travel from one...

This paper reviews both the theoretical underpinnings and the empirical evidence in support of the under-provision of training. While there is little if any evidence in support of underprovision because of liquidity constraints to the demand side of the market, there is evidence that employers...

The ability to share risk efficiently in the economy is essential to welfare and growth. However, the increased frequency of natural catastrophes over the last decade has raised once again questions associated to the limits of insurability in a free-market economy, and to the relevance of public...

Circular Economy literature recommends longer lasting products, in order to reduce pollution from extraction, production, and disposal. Our economic analysis finds conditions where consumers choose lives that are too short - a "durability gap". Then policies targeting durability raise welfare....