Recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade. Given quasi-linear preferences, this makes the distribution of money degenerate - which keeps the models simple but...

Cooperation does not easily scale up—strategic uncertainty increases as groups get larger, preventing coordination on the cooperative equilibrium. In an indefinitely repeated social dilemma experiment conducted in small and large groups, we add partial cooperation choices to the usual rigid...

We study a decentralized trading model as in Peters (1984), where a finite number of heterogeneous capacity-constrained sellers compete for a finite number of homogeneous buyers, by posting prices. This "directed search" model is known to admit symmetric equilibria; yet, uniqueness has proved...

We endogenize the trade mechanism in a search economy with many homogenous sellers and many heterogeneous buyers of unobservable type. We study how heterogeneity and the traders’ continuation values which are endogenous influence the sellers’ choice of trade mechanism. Sellers trade off the...

In a random-matching monetary economy, efficient and inefficient sellers choose between home or market production. Since inefficient sellers bargain up their prices, two equilibria may exist-with high or low market participation-depending on extent of heterogeneity and frictions. In equilibrium,...

The welfare cost of anticipated inflation is quantified in a calibrated model of the U.S. economy that exhibits tractable equilibrium dispersion in wealth and earnings. Inflation does not generate large losses in societal welfare, yet its impact varies noticeably across segments of society...

We study cooperation in four-person economies of indefinite duration. Subjects interact anonymously playing a prisoner’s dilemma. We identify and characterize the strategies employed at the aggregate and at the individual level. We find that (i) grim trigger well describes aggregate play, but...

We study equilibrium prices and trade volume in a market with several identical buyers and a seller who commits to an inventory and then offers goods sequentially. Prices are determined by a strategic costly bargaining process with a random sequence of proponents. A unique subgame perfect...