In economics, the standard approach to language is that talk is cheap. Here, instead, language is a social convention that affects utility. Unless language is used in its ordinary sense, it cannot help to coordinate actions because there is no way of decoding it. This points to a unique...

Under asymmetric information, dishonest sellers lead to market unraveling in the lemons model. An additional cost of dishonesty is that language becomes cheap talk. We develop instead a model where people derive utility from actions (what they say), as well as from outcomes, so talk is costly....

Political budget cycles (PBCs) result from the credibility problems that office-motivated incumbents face under asymmetric information, due to their temptation to manipulate fiscal policy to increase their electoral chances. We analyze the role of rules that limit debt, crucial for aggregate...

In Hume's epistemology, induction leads to discovery in matters of fact. However, because of the poor data Hume analyzes the balance of trade with a thought experiment, doing what Mill makes explicit afterwards: reason from assumptions, to reach conclusions which are true in the abstract. Hume's...