I study a market in which a profit-maximizing intermediary facilitates trade between buyers and sellers. The intermediary sets prices for buyers and sellers, and keeps the difference as her fee. Optimal prices increase with demand and, under plausible conditions, the optimal percent fee...

We develop a simple agent-based financial market model in which speculators' market entry decisions are subject to herding behavior and market risk. Moreover, speculators' orders depend on price trends, market misalignments and fundamental news. Using a mix of analytical and numerical tools, we...

We study dynamic signaling in a game of stochastically evolving stakes. Our motivating example is dynamic limit pricing in markets with persistent demand shocks. An incumbent is privately informed about its costs, high or low, and can deter a potential entrant by setting prices strategically....

In this paper, we study a new channel to explain firms' price setting behavior. We propose that uncertainty about factor prices has a positive effect on markups. We show theoretically that firms with higher shares of inputs with volatile prices set higher markups. We use the Bartik shift-share...

I show in a setting of a buyer and seller with the same preferences trading two related assets so as to share volatility risk that illiquidity and virtually all impediments to trade cannot be priced in the absence of excess short-selling costs. This is because the buyer values the asset at the...

Optimal execution and trading algorithms rely on price impact models, like the propagator model, to quantify trading costs. Empirically, price impact is concave in trade sizes, leading to nonlinear models for which optimization problems are intractable and even qualitative properties such as...

Reforms aimed at reducing the regulatory barriers to firm entry and bolstering greater firm creation have gained significant prominence in economies beyond the U.S. Given these facts and amid growing work on the link between firm creation and cyclical housing-market dynamics, we document a...