In the early 2000s, many developing countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia presented substantial corporate dollar debts. This paper suggests an explanation for this worrisome phenomenon, which builds on the traditional signaling approach. The model brings into the picture specific...

Many observers argue that one of the major causes of the 2007-2009 financial turmoil was the abnormal accumulation of risk by banks. This paper provides a signaling explanation for this "risk race." If banks' returns can be observed while risk cannot, less efficient banks can hide their type by...

When governments loose investors' confidence, additional public spending and the resulting increase in public debt would push-up risk-adjusted interest rates in a more aggressive way. A regression model on a panel of 26 EU countries over the period 1996-2011 shows that a 10 percentage point...

Crowdfunding platforms are providing funds to an increasing number of projects, among which many have a strong social/community impact. Under a all-or-nothing program, the success of the investment depends on the ability of a crowd of potential investors to put their funds into the project...

This paper reports the results from a two-person "pledge and give" experiment. Each person's endowment is private information available only to him. In the first stage, each agent informs the other about the amount he intends to give, or makes a pledge. In the second stage, each agent makes a...

In some countries, including France, patients can choose between consulting a physician working in the regulated sector where, in general, fees are fully covered by health insurance (whether public, private or mixed), or a physician working in the unregulated sector, where a balance billing...

The French market for specialist physician care has a dual legal structure: physicians must exclusively work in sector 1 and charge regulated fees or in sector 2, where they can freely set their fees. Patient out-of-pocket payments in sector 2 are partially covered by private insurance. The...

This paper argues that in Euro-area economies, where the ECB cannot bail-out financially distressed governments, the fiscal multiplier is adversely affected by the amount of public debt. A regression model on a panel of 26 EU countries over the period 1996-2011 shows that a 10 percentage point...

Humans often lie strategically. We study this problem in an ultimatum game involving informed proposers and uninformed responders, where the former can send an unverifiable statement about their endowment. If there are some intrinsically honest proposers, a simple message game shows that the...

Humans can lie strategically in order to leverage on their negotiation power. For instance, governments can claim that a "scapegoat" third party is responsible for reforms that impose higher costs on citizens, in order to make the pill sweeter. This paper analyzes such communication strategy...