We endogenize the market risk (at given technical risk) in firms’ R&D decisions by introducing stochastic R&D in the Hotelling model. It is shown that if the technical risk is sufficiently high, the market risk remains low even if firms pursue similar projects. This leads firms to focus on the...

The empirical performance of macroeconomic exchange rate models is more than disappointing. This dismal result is also reflected in the forecasting capabilities of professional analysts: all in all, analysts are not in a position to beat naïve random walk forecasts. The root for this deficient...

In this Paper we develop a model of intertemporal portfolio choice where an investor accounts explicitly for the possibility of model misspecification. This work is motivated by the difficulty in estimating precisely the probability law for asset returns. Our contribution is to develop a...

According to disposition effect theory, people hold losing investments too long. However, many investors eventually sell at a loss, and little is known about which psychological factors contribute to these capitulation decisions. This study integrates prospect theory, utility maximization...

This working paper by CGD non-resident fellow Dean Karlan explores whether group liability in lending practices improves lender's overall profitability and the poor's access to financial markets. Group liability is a common microcredit lending mechanism that makes a group, rather than an...

This paper identifies two alternative forms of prudential regulation. The first set is formed by regulations that directly control financial aggregates, such as liquidity expansion and credit growth. An example is capital requirements as currently incorporated in internationally accepted...

In this paper, we ask three questions about reference-dependent preferences (RDP) : to what extent can they be said to be irrational ? What is the mechanism that underlies reference dependence? How to design welfare improving policies when preferences are reference-dependent? As to the first...

Constant risk aversion means that adding the same constant to all outcomes of two distributions, or multiplaying all their outcomes by the same positive constant, will not change the preformence relation between them. In this paper we prove several representation theorems, where constant risk...

This paper models an agent in a multi-period setting who does not update according to Bayes' Rule, and who is self-aware and anticipates her updating behavior when formulating plans. Choice-theoretic axiomatic foundations are provided to capture updating biases that reflect excessive weight...