This paper analyzes an agent's option exercise decision under uncertainty. The agent decides whether and when to do an irreversible activity. He is tempted by immediate grati¯cation and su®ers from self-control problems. This paper adopts the Gul and Pensendorfer self- control utility model....

We study the effect of variation in interest rates on investment spending, employing a large panel data set that links yields on outstanding corporate bonds to the issuer income and balance sheet statements. The bond price data—based on trades in the secondary market—enable us to construct a...

This paper presents a fully rational general equilibrium model that produces a time- varying exchange rate risk premium and solves the uncovered interest rate parity (U.I.P) puzzle. In this two-country model, agents are characterized by slow-moving external habit preferences derived from...

We study dual job incentives with a focus on public-service physicians referring patients to their private practices. We call this moonlighting. Not all physicians moonlight; we introduce a group of dedicated doctors who in the base models behave sincerely in the public system. Allowing...

Lipman [2003] shows that in a finite model, the common prior assumption has weak implications for finite orders of beliefs about beliefs. In particular, the only such implications are those stemming from the weaker assumption of a common support. To explore the role of the finite model...

We model physicians as health care professionals who care about their services and monetary rewards. These preferences are heterogeneous. Different physicians trade off the monetary and service motives differently, and therefore respond differently to incentive schemes. Our model is set up for...

The volatility of the price-dividend ratio on stocks, the predictability of stock returns, and the lack of predictability in dividend growth are commonly interpreted as evidence of substantial time-variation in risk premia. We construct the wealth-consumption ratio for the U.S., the...

The literature on self-control problems has typically put forth models that imply behavior that is consistent with the Weak Axiom of Revealed Prefer- ence. Thus, while choice is hypothesized to be the outcome of some under- lying internal con.ict, the resulting choices are perfectly consistent...