Mood is information. A good mood signals a desire to cooperate; a bad mood warns of a determination to oppose. Firms may communicate by mood. The paper makes three points about the mood of a firm. First, mood can change. A change in mood affects everyone in the market. Second, there exists a...

I attempt a more balanced assessment of mergers in terms of systemic risk versus other effects. First, using the simplest network model, I illustrate how mergers can increase systemic risk by reducing the degree of separation among firms. Then, recasting the firms in a simple economic model that...

A supramonopoly is the market structure of a homogeneous good that is priced higher than the monopoly level. We present evidence of supramonopoly in the US air passenger service. For four airline mergers during the period of 1993 to 2009, we identify routes that dropped fares for no other reason...

In markets where consumption is socialized, persuasive advertizing can change consumption by affecting socialization, rather than taste or price. The paper develops an explanation of persuasive advertizing in such markets and notes its particularly simple welfare implications. The paper then...

Modern American bioethics is built on the assumption that the patient is fully rational. That is a very strong assumption and has made modern bioethics difficult to apply. Bioethics ought to adopt the more nuanced notion of rationality from behavioral economics. I go through several major...

Expected-utility theory can explain why people who are terminally ill often feel a surge in wellbeing and hope to live longer when they have the option of legally ending their lives. Behavioral theories, however, may better answer larger questions such as why so few terminally-ill people bother...