The Indian debt overhang issue is one of the major reasons that fresh investments are currently not being made in the scale required to promote higher growth and boost employment. Among banks the public sector banks (PSBs) are burdened with the bulk of net non-performing loans (NNPAs). These...

While most economists agree that the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, there is little agreement as to what caused it. Some have argued that the financial instability we are witnessing is due to irrational exuberance of market participants, fraud, greed, too...

By stepping between bilateral counterparties, a central counterparty (CCP) transforms credit exposure. CCPs generally improve financial stability. Nevertheless, large CCPs are by nature concentrated and interconnected with major global banks. Moreover, although they mitigate credit risk, CCPs...

Considerable evidence demonstrates that significant dispersion exists in the prices charged for seemingly homogeneous goods. This paper adopts a simple, flexible equilibrium model of search to investigate the way the market structure influences price dispersion. Using the noisy search approach,...

This paper studies price competition between experts and discounters in a market for credence goods. While experts can identify a consumer’s problem by exerting costly but unobservable diagnosis effort, discounters just sell treatments without giving any advice. The unobservability of...

This article studies the use of different distribution channels as an instrument of price discrimination in credence goods markets. In credence goods markets, where consumers do not know which quality of the good or service they need, price discrimination proceeds along the dimension of quality...

As it has rightfully been recognized by China's central government, successful urbanization will be decisive for the nation's future development. Key challenges will be to realize urbanization economies, improve production and innovation capabilities, direct urban and suburban growth and improve...

Consider a society with a finite number of individuals. A coalition structure is a partition of the set of individuals. Each individual has personal preferences over the set of all coalition structures. We study the strategy proof core and von Neumann and Morgenstern (vN&M) solutions. A roommate...

This introductory essay briefly summarizes the eleven empirical studies of price setting and price adjustment that are included in this special issue. The studies, which use data from several European countries, were conducted as part of the European Central Bank's Inflation Persistence Network.

This paper uses store-level data on consumer liquor revenues and volume sales in Oregon to estimate the effect of state tax differentials on consumer demand. Liquor privatization in Washington led to higher prices from new taxes. I calculate the impact of tax incidence on tax avoidance using...