We investigate why people keep their promises in the absence of external enforcement mechanisms and reputational effects. In a controlled laboratory experiment we show that exogenous variation of second-order expectations (promisors' expectations about promisees' expectations that the promise...

In this paper we present a series of models, all within the context of a simple two-good economy, which bring out the distinctions between the different types of money and financial institutions. The models emphasize the physical properties of the economic goods, moneys, and trading systems. In...

In this paper we present a series of models, all within the context of a simple two-good economy, which bring out the distinctions among the different types of money and financial institutions. The models emphasize the physical properties of the economic goods, moneys, and trading systems. Part...

We provide a simple but novel model of trade agreements that highlights the role of transaction costs, renegotiation and dispute settlement. The model allows us to characterize the appropriate remedy for breach and whether the agreement should be structured as a system of "property rights" or...

In an economy of interacting agents with both idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks, we examine how the structure of private information influences aggregate volatility. The maximal aggregate volatility is attained in a noise free information structure in which the agents confound idiosyncratic and...

The set of outcomes that can arise in Bayes Nash equilibria of an incomplete information game where players may have access to additional signals beyond the given information structure is equivalent to the set of a version of incomplete information correlated equilibrium which we dub Bayes...

We propose a sequential auction mechanism for a single object in which the seller jointly determines the allocation and the disclosure policy. A sequential disclosure rule is shown to implement an ascending price auction in which each losing bidder learns his true valuation, but the winning...

A game of incomplete information can be decomposed into a basic game and an information structure. The basic game defines the set of actions, the set of payoff states the payoff functions and the common prior over the payoff states. The information structure refers to the signals that the...

We show by an iterated process of price normalization that there generically exists a price-normalizing bundle that determines a credit money, such that the enlargement of the general-equilibrium structure to allow for default subject to an appropriate credit limit and default penalty for each...

The enlargement of the general-equilibrium structure to allow default subject to penalties results in a construction of a simple mechanism for selecting a unique competitive equilibrium. We consider economies for which a common credit money can be applied to uniquely select any competitive...