A common practice of banks has been to pool assets of different qualities and then sell a fraction of the newly created portfolios to investors. We extend the signaling model for single sales of risky assets to portfolio sales. We identify conditions under which signaling at the portfolio level...

The fluctuations in incomes inherent in rural communities can be attenuated by reciprocal insurance. We develop a model of such insurance based on self-interested behaviour and voluntary participation. One individual assists another only if the costs of so doing are outweighed by the benefits...

The fluctuations in incomes inherent in rural communities can be attenuated by reciprocal insurance. We develop a model of such insurance based on self-interested behaviour and voluntary participation. One individual assists another only if the costs of so doing are outweighed by the benefits...

Lending across national boundaries is different from lending within national boundaries because of the difficulty of imposing legal sanctions. This note, examines a simple model of international lending where the borrower can repudiate, without legal sanction, if this is to his advantage. The...

This paper studies the costs and benefits of the adoption of the policy of free movement for workers. For the countries to agree on uncontrolled movement of workers, the short run costs must be outweighed by the long term benefits that result from better labor market flexibility and income...

We consider the problem of stabilising the income of a country, henceforth the borrower, which would always prefer a stable income to a random income with the same average, i.e. a country which is risk-averse. This would be appropriate for countries which are heavily reliant upon agricultural...