This paper addresses the question of delegation in a principal-agent setting with asymmetric information. If the person who has the power to act, the principal, doesn't have the necessary information to make the best possible decision, she can address herself to someone, the agent, who has this...

Should an informed seller lead with the best or worst good in a sequential auction? Considering the sale of two stochastically equivalent goods over two periods, we show that if second period buyers can observe the first period price, the seller has an incentive to lead with the best good so as...

This paper establishes the optimal bootstrap block lengths for coverage probabilities when the bootstrap is applied to covariance stationary ergodic dependent data. It is shown that the block lengths that minimize the error in coverage probabilities of one- and two-sided block bootstrap...

Some industries support Schumpeter's notion of creative destruction through innovative entrants. Others exhibit a single, persistent technological leadership. This paper explores a durable-goods monopolist threatened by entry via a new generation of the durable good. It is shown that the...

Due to the use of distortionary taxation, many believe that real-world economies should attain a lower level of public expenditures than one might suspect from the analysis of artificial models where lump-sum taxes are assumed to be available. The paper examines this popular hypothesis by means...

We study endogenous currency substitution in a decentralized trade environment. Sellers maximize profits from sales of imperfectly substitutable goods by posting prices in either one of two currencies. A unique symmetric equilibrium exists where goods are priced only in the local currency. This...

Macroeconomics has a long tradition of inspecting and interpreting patterns in graphs of aggregate data. However, the move towards more precise quantification of macroeconomic phenomena has seen academics shift away from a study of turning points, which are a natural and obvious way of...

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This paper collects new evidence on the monetary transmission mechanism. This evidence is obtained from the study of the effects that unexpected monetary policy shocks exert on the activity of the manufacturing sectors in 5 OECD countries (France, Germany, Italy, UK and USA). The goal is...

The paper considers the sources of forecast errors and their consequences in an evolving economy subject to structural breaks,forecasting from mis-specified, data-based models. A model-free taxonomy of forecast errors highlights that deterministic shifts are a major cause of systematic forecast...