This paper examines racial disparities in mortgage processing time prior to the global financial crisis. We find that Black borrowers are underrepresented and experience a longer processing time than White borrowers among the mortgages securitized by government-sponsored enterprises. At the same...

Governments often attempt to increase the confidence of financial market participants by making implicit or explicit guarantees of uncertain credibility. Confidence in these guarantees presumably alters the size of the financial sector, but observing the long-run consequences of failed...

Since information asymmetries have been identified as an important source of bank profits, it may seem that the establishment of information sharing (e.g., introducing credit bureaus or public registers) will lead to lower investment in acquiring information. However, banks base their decisions...

Lending is often associated with significant asymmetric information issues between suppliers of funds and their potential borrowers. Banks can screen their borrowers, or can require them to post collateral in order to select creditworthy projects. We find that the potential for longer-term...

Information sharing and collateral reduce adverse selection costs, but are costly for lenders. When a bank learns more about the types of its rival's borrowers through information sharing (e.g., credit bureaus), it might seem that this information should substitute the role of collateral in...

Asymmetric pricing is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We articulate, and provide empirical support for, a theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. In particular, we show how wholesale prices may be asymmetric in the small but symmetric in the large, when...

This paper develops a tractable model for the computational and empirical analysis of infinite-horizon oligopoly dynamics. It features aggregate demand uncertainty, sunk entry costs, stochastic idiosyncratic technological progress, and irreversible exit. We develop an algorithm for computing a...

We develop a model with endogeneity in key features of industrial structure linked to heterogeneous cost structures under Cournot competition. We use the model to explore issues related to cross-country differences in industry structure and the impact of globalization on markups and pricing,...

We investigate the causal effect of market structure on market performance in the consumer electronics. We combine data from Austria's largest online site for price comparisons with retail data on wholesale prices provided by a major hardware producer for consumer electronics. We observe input...

We measure the welfare consequences of endogenous quality choice in imperfectly competitive markets. We introduce the concept of a "quality markup" and measure the relative welfare consequences of market power over price and quality. For U.S. paid-television markets during 1997-2006, we find...