In this paper we follow recent developments of panel data studies and explicitly allow for the existence of unobserved common time-specific factors where their individual responses are also allowed to be heterogeneous across cross section units. In the context of this extended panel data...

When there is spatial arbitrage between food markets, the price differential between the markets should equal the cost of transfer. This simple arbitrage rule has formed the basis of many empirical tests of the performance of developing countries’ food markets. Here, a more complex structure...

We view a contract as a list of outcomes. Ex ante, the parties commit not to consider outcomes not on the list, i.e., these are “ruled out”. Ex post, they freely bargain over outcomes on the list, i.e., the contract specifies no mechanism to structure their choice; in this sense outcomes on...

This paper deals with the issue of modelling daily catches of fishing boats in the Grand Bank fishing grounds. We have data on catches per species for a number of vessels collected by the European Union (EU) in the context of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAPO). Many variables...

This paper challenges the view that legal rights are not important in affecting whether people divorce, but it puts as much emphasis on property rights (given, for example, by the law on alimony) as on dissolution rights. The paper sets out two stylised models of marriage and examines the...

It is now quite common to have panels in which both T, the number of time series observations, and N, the number of groups, are quite large and of the same order of magnitude. The usual practice is either to estimate N separate regressions and calculate the coefficient means, which we call the...

In this paper we begin by developing practical Bayesian methods for inference in a standard equilibrium search model. We then consider two models which are more flexible, but centered over the equilibrium search model using Bayesian priors. Such priors can be used to control the degree of...

We present a simple model of management teams where the time it takes to make decisions is related to the size of the committee. We characterize the situations where larger or smaller sizes of the management team are desirable depending on the covariance structure of the signals that the...

We contribute to the debate over whether forecastable stock returns reflect an unexploited profit opportunity or rationally reflect risk differentials. We test whether agents could earn excess returns by selecting stocks which have a low market price compared to an estimate of the fundamental...

We build a model of firms’ choice between formality and informality. Complying with costly registration procedures allows the firms to benefit from key public goods, enforcement of property rights and contracts, that make the participation in the formal credit market possible. In a moral...