Consider an exchange economy with multiple competitive equilibria. Agents know the set of equilibria, but not which will be selected. To insure against unfavorable equilibrium outcomes, they trade on markets for commodities contingent on the equilibrium price vector. Such price-contingent...

We study the risks associated with the prospect of global climate change, and review the mechanisms available for their efficient allocation in market economies. Risks in this field are typically unknown and often unknowable ex ante; their probabilities are endogenous and determined by economic...

The paper establishes a clear connection between equilibrium theory and social choice theory by showing that, for a well defined social choice problem, the conditions which are necessary and sufficient to establish existence of a competitive equilibrium. We define a condition of limited...

A condition of limited arbitrage is defined on the endowments and the preferences of the traders in an Arrow-Debreu economy. It bounds the diversity of the traders in the economy, and the gains from trade which they can afford from initial endowments. Theorem 1 shows that limited arbitrage is...

We are on the threshold of a truly revolutionary era of discovery- ranging from the origins of the universe to new states of matter and microscope machines, from a new understanding of the oceans and the biological connections across the earth's species to the functioning od the human brain and...

We consider contracts to purchase assets by means of streams of payments over time, with the asset as security. These give the purchaser an option not present if all payment is made up front, the option of stopping payments and delivering the asset in satisfaction of the remaining debt. We argue...

In "Bargaining to Lose: The Permeability Approach to Post Transition Resource Extraction" [1] Natasha Chichilnisky-Heal introduces an original and fertile explanation for the resource curse. Her "permeability" approach questions the treatment of the state as a decision maker having the public...

Many of the present difficulties of the world economy have been blamed on the two oil-price explosions of the 1970s. Professor Chichilnisky shows that, at least in the case of the oil-importing developing countries, the negative effects have been overestimated. In fact, in some respects the oil...