Recent empirical studies examining the asymmetric effects of monetary shocks on economic activity do not systematically control for the non-monetary sources of fluctuations as well as the endogenous component of monetary policy. The evidence of asymmetry could simply reflect the failure to...

The return to sound fiscal policy after the high budget deficits of the 1980s and early 1990s has been hailed by many as the Clinton administration's most important achievement. In this article, we evaluate post-war, US fiscal policy using an extension of Barro's (1979) tax-smoothing model,...

We explore the implications of endogenous credit market imperfections for the relationship between property crime and the process of economic development. In the initial stages of development, property crime rises as the opportunities to gain from illegal activities expand. In later stages,...

In this paper, we show that in a dynamic general equilibrium economy, the presence of moral hazard need not induce large cuts in optimal unemployment insurance benefits when agents are asked to vote on these benefits. We find that it takes a quite large proportion of "shirkers" to bend the...

Bank loans are more available and cheaper for new and small businesses in the U.S. in areas with highly concentrated banks than in areas with highly competitive banks. To explain this fact, we analyze banks' decisions to screen the project and their subsequent competition in loan provisions. It...

This paper analyzes a two-country general equilibrium model with multiple stages of production and sticky prices. Working through the cross-country input-output relations and endogenous price stickiness, the model generates the observed patterns in international aggregate comovements following...

This paper analyzes the trade-off between monitoring and incentives in a principal-agent relationship with moral hazard. We derive general results on the optimal monitoring-incentives mix for the case where both parties are risk-neutral and the agent faces a limited liability constraint. We show...

In this paper, we investigate whether the different distributions of European, Canadian and US labor forces may explain their differences in unemployment insurance generosity and attitude towards moral hazard. We do so within a dynamic general equilibrium model with indivisible labor and...

When it is costly for agents to find a match, integrating small markets into a larger one increases the matching difficulty. We examine such dependence of the number of matches on the market size by explicitely modelling firms' attempt to attract workers by posting wages. It is shown that...

This paper analyzes the incentive properties of the standard and burden of proof for a finding of negligence, when evidence about injurers' behavior is imperfect and rests with the parties. We show that the `preponderance of evidence' standard used in common law, together with ordinary exclusion...