Background: This paper explores the financial viability of eBay's Buyer Protection Plan. Methods: We explore their warranty model assuming exponential auction listing and claims times, under competing assumptions of Normal (classical portfolio theory) versus Paretian claims (industry practice)...

Market data for financial studies typically derives from either historical transactions or contemporaneous surveys of sentiment and perceptions. The research communities analyzing data from these opposing categories of source data see themselves as distinct, with advantages not shared by the...

We provide a theory of how growth, corruption, and a low-powered public-sector pay scale coexist in a stable equilibrium in the early stage of China's development. The regionally decentralized authoritarian regime of China features lower-level government officials competing for promotion to a...