Transparency has become a catchword and in the economic-political debate is often seen as a universal remedy for all sorts of problems. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the meaning and use of the concept of transparency in economic research. We look for common denominators across different...

I consider a real business cycle model in which agents have private information about an idiosyncratic shock to their value of leisure. I consider the mechanism design problem for this economy and describe a computational method to solve it. This is an important contribution of the paper since...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a...

Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a...

I take advantage of regulatory and pricing dynamics in Medicare Part D to empirically explore interactions among adverse selection, switching costs, and regulation. I first document novel evidence of adverse selection and switching costs within Part D using detailed administrative data. I then...

We use data from a large US life expectancy provider to test for asymmetric information in the secondary life insurance-or life settlements-market. We compare realized lifetimes for a subsample of settled policies relative to all (settled and nonsettled) policies, and find a positive...

Consumers with insufficient resources can finance purchases by applying for specific purpose loans or unspecified purpose loans. I examine the default gap of these two types of loans by using a unique dataset of consumer loans from a Czech commercial bank. In line with theoretical models that...

I study a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which information on capital quality is asymmetric and the degree of information asymmetry varies endogenously with the state of the economy, amplifying the shocks. Firms hold capital and borrow to cover their operating expenses....

Asymmetric information is crucial for understanding the disruption of the supply of credit. This paper studies a dynamic economy featuring asymmetric information and resulting adverse selection in credit markets. Entrepreneurs seek loans from banks for projects, but asymmetric information about...

We build a model of endogenous credit cycles arising from the dynamics of adverse selection. Heterogeneous entrepreneurs trade productive assets in an anonymous market subject to financial frictions. Cream-skimming rent-seekers create lemon assets that can be traded. Lemon assets are...