A structural model of entry and fiscal policy is presented. It shows that taxation of variable production costs can increase product prices, lower competition, and reduce the availability of new products in small markets. The model's test is based on a unique nationwide fiscal experiment. We...

An industry is modeled in which entrepreneurs, who are heterogeneous in ability, may produce formally or informally. It is shown how the formal-informal mix depends on the distribution of ability, product demand and various parameter values. The industry equilibrium is compared to one in which...

We provide an explanation for peer pressure in teams based on inequity aversion. Analyzing a two-period model with two agents, we find that the effect of inequity aversion strongly depends on the information structure. When contributions are unobservable, agents act as if they were purely...

We design an online experiment that mimics a Twitter/X "feed" to test whether (perceived) poster gender influences users' propensity to doubt the veracity of a given post. On average, posts by women are less likely to be flagged as concerning than identical posts by men. Heterogeneity analysis...

The Coase theorem emphasizes the role transactions costs play in efficient market outcomes. We document inefficient outcomes, in the presence of a transactions cost, in southern California land markets and the corresponding transition to efficient outcomes after the transactions cost is...

We characterize how public insurance schemes are constrained by hidden financial transactions. When non-exclusive private insurance entails increasing unit transaction costs, public transfers are only partly offset by hidden private transactions, and can influence consumption allocation. We show...

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and...