Will an industry with no antitrust policy converge to monopoly, competition or somewhere in between? We analyze this question using a dynamic dominant firm model with rational agents, endogenous mergers and constant returns to scale production. We find that perfect competition and monopoly are...

We analyze answers to household survey questions on whether the respondents' household income has changed in the past twelve months, and on whether the respondents expect their household income to change in the next twelve months. Both questions are answered on a discrete five points scale. The...

This paper studies a simple OLG model with production under the assumption that capital investment is completely irreversible: installed capital cannot be transformed back into consumption good nor transferred from one firm to another. Since firms cannot be dismantled at each generational change...

We examine the incentives of an interest group to provide a political decision-maker with policy-relevant information and to exert pressure on her. Both activities are costly but may induce the lobby's preferred policy. Our paper provides an integrated analysis of both lobbying activities and...

Recent research suggests that income redistribution preferences vary across identity groups. We employ a new pattern recognition technology to uncover what these groups are. Using data from the General Social Survey, we present a new stylized fact that preferences for governmental provision of...

The market mechanisms built into the Kyoto Protocol have the potential of significantly reducing costs of limiting greenhouse gases. But if trading proceeds on a bilateral project-by-project basis rather than on a frictionless market, the total cost saving potential of trading is unclear. This...

Since the Asian economic crisis in 1997, some have argued that the poor corporate governance system was a contributing cause of the crisis. They claim that the weakness of minority shareholders' rights protection and the lack of market discipline for poor performing firms in the region made it...

With widely publicized high repayment rates, microfinance is gaining a great deal of attention. Using data from Guatemala, this paper examines risk matching in credit groups. The literature often assumes that joint-liability will lead groups to form homogeneously in risk, and that risk...

This paper is about freedom of choice and rigidity of choice rules as incentive devices. We study the optimal design of an agent's freedom of choice when his information is endogenous and costly to acquire. We show that curtailing the agent's authority over decision-making may be optimal even if...

The assumption of internationally identical factor intensity techniques may be one of the major causes of the HOV model's poor performance. To relax this assumption, detailed input-output data are required to compute the factor intensity techniques used in different countries; however, these...