In this paper we use an experiment to compare a theory of risk aversion and a theory of spite as an explanation for overbidding in auctions. As a workhorse we use the second-price all-pay and the first-price winner-pay auction. Both risk and spite can be used to rationalize deviations from risk...

Anticipating "social risk", or risk caused by humans, affects decision-making differently from anticipating natural risk. Drawing upon a large sample of the US population (n=3,982), we show that the phenomenon generalizes to risk experience. Experiencing adverse outcomes caused by another human...

This paper analyzes how insurance companies allow the issue of market incompleteness to be overcome. A general equilibrium economy is considered in which heterogeneous agents face endowment risks. Markets are incomplete: there are only markets for trading commodities ex-post and hedging price...

The classic Arrow-Debreu framework requires a very large number of specific securities to reach Pareto optimality. The present paper shows that financial intermediation can play an important role in maintaining a more parsimonious market framework while still obtaining Pareto optimality. In the...

The present paper considers a class of general equilibrium economics when the primitive uncertainty model features uncertainty about continuous-time volatility. This requires a set of mutually singular priors, which do not share the same null sets. For this setting we introduce an appropriate...

I extend the classical general equilibrium treatment of uncertainty about exogenous states of nature to uncertainty about prices. Traders do not know the prices at which markets will clear but have expectations over possible prices. They trade price-contingent securities (derivatives) to insure...

The rapid accumulation and persistence of interenterprise credits and arrears is a fairly common phenomenon in transition economies, posing serious policy concerns. A general equilibrium model of production chains is presented to analyze this phenomenon and provide policy implications. The model...

This paper shows the general reversibility of every perfect foresight equilibrium of an overlapping generations economy. It then shows and characterizes the existence of reversible sunspot equilibria in these economies as well, which seems to be at odds with our intuition about the...

We present a novel finding that high macroeconomic uncertainty is associated with greater accumulation of physical capital, despite a contemporaneous reduction in investment. To reconcile this evidence, we show that high uncertainty predicts a persistent decrease in the utilization and...

We find that high macroeconomic uncertainty is associated with greater accumulation of physical capital, despite a reduction in investment and valuations. To reconcile this puzzling evidence, we show that uncertainty predicts lower depreciation and utilization of existing capital, which...