The accumulation of large amount of sovereign reserves has fuelled an intense debate on the associated costs. In a world with liquidity crises and strategic default, we model a contracting game between international lenders and a country, which delivers the country's optimal portfolio choice and...

This paper provides an introduction to the literature on financial contagion in networks. In the first part, we consider contagion via transmission of shocks, i.e. an abrupt drop in the flow of revenue to one firm, which affects other firms connected to it through financial linkages. We then...

This note proves existence of a unique equilibrium in a Lucas (1978) economy when the utility function displays constant relative risk aversion and log dividends follow a normally distributed AR(1) process with positive auto-correlation. In particular, the note provides restrictions on the...

This paper studies the role of exit from a monetary union during a debt crisis. A monetary union, such as the European Monetary Union, needs to establish a procedure for exit as a tool to cope with debt default. The paper studies various forms of exit and argues that “Euroization” is both a...

This paper analyzes the effects of a ban on smoking in public places upon firms and consumers. Analysis of survey data from public houses finds that the Scottish smoking ban (introduced in March 2006) reduced pub sales and harmed medium run profitability. An event study analysis of the stock...

We examine how natural resource location, rent sharing and fighting capacities of different groups matter for ethnic conflict. A new type of bargaining failure due to multiple types of potential con.icts (and hence multiple threat points) is identified. The theory predicts conflict to be more...

The ratio of second to fourth digit (2D4D) has been shown to correlate negatively with entrepreneurial skills and financial success. We document that in a sample of entrepreneurs women have a lower 2D4D ratio than men, in sharp contrast with the features of the distribution in random samples....

While it is recognized that the family is primarily an institution for risk sharing, little is known about the quantitative effects of this informal source of insurance on savings and labor supply. In this paper, we present a model where workers (females and males) are subject to idiosyncratic...

This paper studies the performance of government subsidy programs which fund business R&D projects. A commonly used criterion for distributing funding is the case-by-case (CbC) rule. Under the rule, project funding is decided based on the gap between a project’s social and private return. This...

This paper introduces a new regression model - Markov-switching mixed data sampling (MS-MIDAS) - that incorporates regime changes in the parameters of the mixed data sampling (MIDAS) models and allows for the use of mixed-frequency data in Markov-switching models. After a discussion of...