Financial intermediaries may increase economic efficiency through intertemporal risk smoothing. However without an adequate regulation, intermediation may fail to do this. This paper studies the effects of a production shock in a closed economy and compares abilities of market-based and...

Banking regulators often practice forbearance and ambiguity in insolvency resolutions. The paper examines the effects of regulatory forbearance and ambiguity in a context of allocational efficiency. Bailouts, liquidations and their stochastic policy mix lead to suboptimal allocations if banks do...

Rising household debt has become a major policy concern in Korea. By the end of 2012, it had risen to 164% of disposable income, well above the OECD average of 133%. In addition to the economic impact and the risk to the financial sector, it raises social cohesion issues, as households with low...

This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate. Specifically, it analyses the impact of the precautionary savings motive and the impact of the 2002...

The potential implications of gender differences in financial literacy are far-reaching. This paper describes the findings of a review of the literature on gender differences in financial literacy with the aim to better understand their causes and consequences, as well as possible policy...

This report provides a conceptual foundation for the analysis of international regulatory co-operation (IRC) and its potential benefits through reduced trade costs. Different forms of IRC aiming to reduce specification, conformity assessment and information costs - which can arise from...

We use an experiment to explore how subjects learn to play against computers which are programmed to follow one of a number of standard learning algorithms. The learning theories are (unbeknown to subjects) a best response process, fictitious play, imitation, reinforcement learning, and a trial...

We introduce a generalized theoretical approach to study imitation and subject it to rigorous experimental testing. In our theoretical analysis we find that the different predictions of previous imitation models are due to different informational assumptions, not to different behavioral rules....