Section I of this paper develops a model of income insurance in the labor market. The model differs from those of previous analyses in its focus on quantitative implications regarding the degree to which wages diverge from marginal value products, both in time-series and in cross-section data....

We derive the effect of plausible deniability on asset risk premia in a dynamic setting with correlated firm values, systematic risk, and risk-averse investors. Firms optimally exercise American disclosure options, which are more valuable due to the possibility that other correlated firms may...

This paper studies the design of optimal contracts in dynamic environments where agents have private information that is persistent. In particular, I focus on a continuous time version of a benchmark insurance problem where a risk averse agent would like to borrow from a risk neutral lender to...

We study an economy where the lack of a simultaneous double coincidence of wants creates the need for a relatively safe asset (money). We show that, even in the absence of asymmetric information or an agency problem, the private provision of liquidity is inefficient. The reason is that liquidity...

This paper studies the bidding behavior of firms in U.S. Forest Service timber auctions in 1976--1990. When conducting timber auctions, the Forest Service publicly announces its estimates of the tract characteristics before the auction, and each bidder additionally has an opportunity to inspect...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to study a decentralized market where goods are differentiated and evaluations are private. We implement different semi-structured bargaining protocols based on deferred acceptance, and we compare their performance to the benchmark scenario of a sealed-bid...

Choice screen auctions have been recently deployed in 31 European countries, allowing consumers to choose their preferred search engine on Google's Android platform instead of being automatically defaulted to Google's own search engine. I show that a seemingly minor detail in the design of these...

Is order-flow an important component of private information possessed by traders in government securities markets? Utilizing a detailed data set on Government of Canada securities auctions, we argue that the answer is yes. Direct participation in these auctions is limited to government...

How does investors' information about a country's fundamentals, and the fact that this information may be asymmetrically held, affect a country's financing cost? Motivated by this question, and by the observation that sovereign bonds are usually auctioned in large lots to a large number of...

We analyze bidding data from uniform price auctions of U.S. Treasury bills and notes between July 2009-October 2013. Primary dealers consistently bid higher yields compared to direct and indirect bidders. We estimate a structural model of bidding that takes into account informational asymmetries...