Evidence on adverse selection in slave markets remains inconclusive. We study this question through notarial acts on public slave auctions in Mauritius between 1825 and 1835, involving 4,286 slaves. In addition to slave characteristics, the acts document the identities of buyers and sellers. We...

In many developing and emerging market economies, governments intervene to limit the degree to which oil-price increases are passed through to domestic fuel prices. This paper investigates whether, and to what extent, this intervention is warranted in an oil-importing economy characterized by...

We study the welfare effects of government-backed FDIs in Africa’s farmlands. We build an occupational choice model featuring four mechanisms driving these effects. First, local farming is subject to social arrangements prescribing that farmers share their crop surplus with kin. Second,...

We build a political economy model of state policy choice highlighting the challenges to breaking barriers to the adoption of inclusive policies in Africa. We highlight necessary and sufficient conditions for a political leader to gain from implementing exclusive policies: (i) Implementing...

This letter presents and assesses a procedure to generate recursive measures of aggregate total wealth and portfolio return. Conceptually, the procedure is more flexible than the classical replacement cost and present value methods. Empirically, the procedure yields recursive measures that...

We propose a consumption-based capital asset pricing model in which the representative agent's preferences display state-dependent risk aversion. We obtain a valuation equation in which the vector of excess on equity includes both consumption risk as well as the risk associated with variations...

This paper analyzes the important time variation in U.S. aggregate portfolio allocations. To do so, we first use flexible descriptions of preferences and investment opportunities to derive optimal decision rules that nest tactical, myopic, and strategic portofolio allocations. We then compare...

This paper studies the informational content of elective teams in a dynamic principal/multiple-agents framework with adverse selection. Two agents with different employment histories are paid their conditional expected marginal product. They observe their types (good or bad), and choose between...

This paper develops a two-sector, general equilibrium, overlapping generations model to study necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of private tutoring, when education is publicly provided. Young agents have heterogeneous endowments of human capital, which they can augment...

This paper develops a model where two agents in different sectors face uncorrelated income risks and mutually self-insure. We discuss how the rent arising from risk pooling modifies the wage distribution in the sector where the employer behaves as a monopsonist.