Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash-flow risk by trading in financial markets but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain greater...

We study 2-period pure-exchange Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) economies with incomplete financial markets and restricted participation. We characterize the optimal financial-market structure and efficient innovations consisting of both the introduction of new assets and the integration of...

We model the opacity of over-the-counter (OTC) markets in a setup where agents share risks, but have incentives to default and their financial positions are not mutually observable. We show that this setup results in excess "leverage" in that parties take on short OTC positions that lead to...

Social interactions arguably provide a rationale for several important phenomena, from smoking and other risky behavior in teens to e.g., peer effects in school performance. We study social interactions in dynamic economies. For these economies, we provide existence (Markov Perfect Equilibrium...

We study competitive economies with adverse selection and fully exclusive contractual relationships. We consider economies where agents are privately informed over the probability distribution of their endowments, and trade to insure against this uncertainty. As in Prescott-Townsend (1984), we...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the distribution of a population of some of the cultural traits and norms which might be associated to the support for Welfare State as a system for the provision of public goods and as a redistributive mechanism. Cultural traits and norms are acquired through...