The paper provides a specification of belief systems for models of large economies with anonymity in which aggregate states depend only on cross-section distributions of types. For belief systems satisfying certain conditions of mutual absolute continuity, the paper gives a necessary and...

Rodrigues-Neto (2009) has shown that a given specification of posteriors of different players in an incomplete-information setting is compatible with a common prior if and only if the posteriors satisfy the so-called cycle equations. This note shows that, if, for any player, any element of the...

The paper reviews and assesses our understanding of the notion of 'market discipline' in corporate governance. It questions the wholesale appeal to this notion in policy discussion, which fails to provide an account of the underlying mechanisms in terms of theory and empirical analysis....

The paper gives an overview over issues concerning the role of financial stability in monetary policy and the relation between banking supervision and central banking. Following a brief account of developments in the European Monetary Union since its creation, the systematic treatment contains...

The paper discusses the respective roles of competition policy and sector-specific regulation for industries such as telecommunications, electricity, and gas, in which network infrastructures that are natural monopolies serve as essential facilities for anybody who wants to provide services in...

The paper analyses the causes of the current crisis of the global financial system, with particular emphasis on the systemic elements that turned the crisis of subprime mortgage-backed securities in the United States, a small part of the overall system, into a worldwide crisis. The first half of...

Der Aufsatz leistet einen Beitrag zur Diskussion um zusätzliche Beschränkungen der Beteiligung und Mitwirkung von Investoren an Aktiengesellschaften. Teil 1 stellt die Diskussion um die Beteiligung ausländischer Staatsfonds und die Einflussnahme von Hedge Fonds an deutschen Unternehmen in den...

The paper provides an extension and a new proof of Deaton's theorem on the undesirability of nonuniform excise taxation when income taxes are affine and preferences over consumption goods are separable from labour-leisure choices, homothetic, and identical across agents. -- Optimal Excise Taxes...

The Atkinson-Stiglitz (1976) theorem on the undesirability of nonuniform excise taxation when all agents have homogeneous, separable preferences is extended to allow for nonseparability with respect to endogenous variables that will be subject to distortions. The result is useful for analysing...

This paper studies the design of optimal utilitarian mechanisms for an excludable public good. Excludability provides a basis for making people pay for admissions; the payments can be used for redistribution and/or funding. Whereas previous work assumed that admissions are governed by the...