Economic theory suggests that monopoly prices hurt consumers but benefit shareholders. But in a world where individuals or households can be both consumers and shareholders, the impact of market power on inequality depends in part on the relative distribution of consumption and corporate equity...

We analyze financial market data in order to produce an ex-ante assessment of the economic consequences of war with Iraq. The novel feature of our analysis derives from the existence of a market for Saddam Securities,' a new future traded on an online betting exchange that pays only if Saddam...

We review the efficacy of three approaches to forecasting elections: econometric models that project outcomes on the basis of the state of the economy; public opinion polls; and election betting (prediction markets). We assess the efficacy of each in light of the 2004 Australian election. This...

In "Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia," Blanchflower and Oswald (2005) observe an apparent puzzle: they claim that Australia ranks highly in the Human Development Index (HDI), but relatively poorly in happiness. However, when we compare their happiness data with...

We examine how the net worth of billionaires relates to their looks, as rated by 16 people of different gender and ethnicity. Surprisingly, their financial assets are unrelated to their beauty; nor are they related to their educational attainment. As a group, however, billionaires are both more...

This paper robustly concludes that it cannot. A model is constructed under idealised conditions that presume the risks associated with artificial general intelligence (AGI) are real, that safe AGI products are possible, and that there exist socially-minded funders who are interested in funding...

This is a paper in the ``economists ruin everything'' field. It considers whether Catch-22 situations can persist as an equilibrium phenomenon. Rather than being an arbitrary rule or a set of self-serving beliefs, the focus is on the preferences of Gatekeepers who choose to create such...

The most commonly used test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 is a PCR test that is able to detect very low viral loads and inform on treatment decisions. Medical research has confirmed that many individuals might be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but not infectious. Knowing whether an individual is...

This paper examines the relationship between Knightian uncertainty and Bayesian approaches to entrepreneurship. Using Bewley's formal model of uncertainty and incomplete preferences, it demonstrates that key predictions from Bayesian entrepreneurship remain robust when accounting for Knightian...

This article examines patterns of entry and exit in a relatively homogeneous product market to investigate the impact of entry on incumbent firms and market structure. In particular, we are interested in whether the organizational form of entrants matters for the competitive decisions of...