We investigate the lead-lag relationships between issuer- and investor-paid credit rating agencies, in the aftermath of the regulatory reforms undertaken in the U.S. between 2002 and 2006 —including watch list inclusions and outlooks. First, we find that the lead effect of investor-paid over...

Reciprocity can be a powerful motivation for human behaviour. Scholars argue that it is relevant in the context of private provision of public goods. We examine whether reciprocity can resolve the associated coordination problem. The interaction of reciprocity with cost-sharing is critical....

An action is justi?fiable if it is a best reply to some belief. We show that higher ambiguity aversion enlarges the set of justifi?able actions.

We analyze political selection in a closed list proportional system where parties have strong gate-keeping power, which they use as an instrument to pursue votes. Parties face a trade-off between selecting loyal candidates or experts, who are highly valued by the voters and thus increase the...

In deciding whether to join a coalition or not, an agent must consider both i) the expected power of the coalition and ii) her position in the vertical structure within the coalition. We establish the existence of a positive relationship between the degree of inequality in remuneration across...

Paul Krugman has written a very timely paper. It discusses an old issue, that has become very relevant again. My comments address two questions. First, should inflation targeting be reconsidered? Here my answer is a clear and resounding yes. Inflation targeting performed very well in the fight...

Severe economic downturns, characterized by deleverage, are typically preceeded by phenomena of debt overhang. This evidence suggests that large recessions may not be the result of large shocks, but, rather, of the interaction between typical shocks and the current state of the economy. We study...

Exploiting the timing of the 2005-2006 Italian bankruptcy law reforms, we disentangle the effects of reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy on bank financing nd firm investment. A 2005 reform introduces reorganization procedures facilitating loan renegotiation. The 2006 reform subsequently...

Because journals favor clear stories researchers’ may gain by engaging in scientific misconduct, ranging from shady practices like running more sessions hoping for significance to outright data fabrication. To set researchers’ incentives straight, we propose sealed-envelope submissions,...

Experimental evidence suggests that agents in social dilemmas have belief-dependent, other-regarding preferences. But in experimental games such preferences cannot be common knowledge, because subjects play with anonymous co-players. We address this issue theoretically and experimentally in the...