We examine financial intermediation when banks can offer deposit or loan contracts contingent on macroeconomic shocks. We show that the risk allocation is efficient provided there is no workout of banking crises. In this case, banks will shift part of the risk to depositors. In contrast, under a...

We propose a flexible majority rule for central bank councils where the size of the majority depends monotonically on the change in interest rate within a particular time frame. Small changes in interest rate require a small share of supporting votes, even less than 50%. We show that flexible...

As the performance of long-term projects is not observable in the short run politicians may pander to public opinion. To solve this problem, we propose a triple mechanism involving political information markets, reelection threshold contracts, and democratic elections. An information market is...

We design a global refunding scheme as a new international approach to address climate change. A global refunding system allows each country to set its carbon emission tax, while aggregate tax revenues are partially refunded to member countries in proportion to the relative emission reductions...

Insurance contracts contingent on macroeconomic shocks or on average bank capital could be a way of insuring against systemic crises. With insurance, banks are recapitalized when negative events would otherwise cause a write down of capital or even bank insolvency. In a simple model we...

This Paper compares the social efficiency of monetary targeting and inflation targeting when central banks may have private information on shocks to money demand and, because of verifiability problems, the transparency solution is not feasible. Under inflation targeting and monetary targeting,...

We develop a product market theory that explains why firms invest in general training of their workers. We consider a model where firms first decide whether to invest in general human capital, then make wage offers for each other’s trained employees and finally engage in imperfect product...

Agents from a homogeneous population organize themselves into productive partnerships and are confronted with a hold-up problem when making relation-specific investments in those partnerships. The problem is mitigated if agents can leave a partnership in which they have invested, bear the costs...

We introduce tax contracts and examine how they affect government formation and welfare of voters in a democracy with proportional elections. A tax contract specifies a range of tax rates a party is committed to if in government. We develop a new model of party competition in which parties...

We show that in democracies insufficient recognition of general equilibrium effects can lead to a crisis. We consider a two-sector economy in which a majoritarian political process determines governmental regulation in one sector: a minimum nominal wage. If voters recognize general equilibrium...