It has been argued that competing banks make inefficiently frequent use of collateralization in situations where they are better able to evaluate a project's risk than entrepreneurs. We study the bank's choice between screening and collateralization in a model where banks do not have this...

This paper is a contribution to the literature on rational design of trade agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign states. Incomplete contracts contain gaps. Ex post, contractual gaps may leave gains from trade unrealized; they may create...

Until recently, theorists considering the evolution of human cooperation have paid little attention to institutional punishment, a defining feature of large-scale human societies. Compared to individually-administered punishment, institutional punishment offers a unique potential advantage: the...

Appraisals are needed for decision-making and for performance evaluation. Knowledge on the accuracy of valuation methods is of general interest for banks and investors. We assess the accuracy of the German Regulation on Valuation with monthly data on appraisals and prices for commercial...

This paper explores potential endowment effects of contractual default rules. For this purpose, we analyze the Hadley liability default clause in a model of bilateral bargaining of lotteries against safe options. The liability default clause determines the right for the safe payoff option. We...

The paper reviews (in Czech) the main qualitative tools applied by (micro)economic analysis and surveys the main literature on the topic. Economics is often being criticised by its opponents for the use of unrealistic assumptions. On the contrary, my claim is that if economics has anything to...

We study the consequences of 'leniency' - reduced legal sanctions for wrongdoers who spontaneously self-report to law enforcers - on corruption, drug dealing, and other forms of sequential, bilateral, illegal trade. We find that when not properly designed, leniency may be highly...

We investigate optimal rewards in an R&D model where substitute ideas for innovation arrive to random recipients at random times. By foregoing investment in a current idea, society as a whole preserves an option to invest in a better idea for the same market niche, but with delay. Because...

Since the global financial crisis of 2007, regulators and economists have analysed the moral hazards inherent in institutional arrangements which encouraged economic actors to act irresponsibly. The process of institutional reform must extend to review of legal rules which allow transacting...