We consider the optimality of liquidated damages contracts in a setting of contractual ambiguity and potential for disputes. We show that when parties are ambiguity averse enough, they will optimally choose liquidated damages contracts and sacrifice risk sharing opportunities.

We focus on aspects of differential awareness that give rise to contractual disputes. Parties to a contract are boundedly rational as the state space available to them is coarser than the complete state space. Hence, they may disagree as to which state of the world has occurred, and therefore as...

Any meaningful reform of the US Social Security system must deal with the system's current outstanding accumulated unfunded liabilities. The authors model these as a once-off financial liability payable 'tomorrow'. They show that if the equity premium puzzle arises from adverse selection...

Any meaningful reform of the US Social Security system must deal with the system's current outstanding accumulated unfunded liabilities. The authors model these as a once-off financial liability payable 'tomorrow'. They show that if the equity premium puzzle arises from adverse selection...

We present a definition of increasing uncertainty, independent of any notion of subjective probabilities, or of any particular model of preferences.Our notion of an elementary increase in the uncertainty of any act corresponds to the addition of an 'elementary bet' which increases consumption by...

The equity premium puzzle shows that using standard parameters and setup, the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model's (CCAPM's) prediction of the premium associated with systematic risk is out by an order of magnitude.The object of this paper is to consider the implications of each of...

The 'noise trader' model of De Long et al. provides a plausible account of the determination of the equity premium.Extension of the model to allow for privatization of publicly-owned assets yields insights into the positive political economy of privatization and into the normative question of...

We present a definition of increasing uncertainty, in which an elementary increase in the uncertainty of any act corresponds to the addition of an `elementary bet' that increases consumption by a fixed amount in (relatively) `good' states and decreases consumption by a fixed (and possibly...

We formulate a dynamic framework for an individual decision-maker within which discovery of previously unconsidered propositions is possible. Using a standard game-theoretic representation of the state space as a tree structure generated by the actions of agents (including acts of nature), we...