This paper lays down a model where dispersed information generates booms and busts in economic activity. Boom-and-bust dynamics start when firms are initially over-optimistic about demand due to an aggregate noise shock in their signals. Consequently, they over-produce, which generates a boom....

In this paper, we examine theoretically how corporate saving in emerging markets is contributing to global rebalancing. We consider a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model, based on Bacchetta and Benhima (2014), with a Developed and an Emerging country. Firms need to save in liquid...

This paper highlights the importance of natural resource concentration and ethnic group regional concentration for ethnic conflict. A new type of bargaining failure due to multiple types of potential conflicts (and hence multiple threat points) is identified. The theory predicts war to be more...

The conflict in Northern Ireland was an example of "complex warfare" with both insurgency and sectarian violence. We present a unified model that helps to identify these two forms of conflict from the spatial distribution of violence. The model predicts that tectonic boundaries between...

While the 2008-2009 financial crisis originated in the United States, we witnessed steep declines in output, consumption and investment of similar magnitudes around the globe. This raises two questions. First, given the observed strong home bias in goods and financial markets, what can account...

We establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-State conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be more likely when at least one country has natural resources; when the...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but richer voters are on average best informed. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political platforms that are better aligned...

We consider multiple-type housing markets. To capture the dynamic aspect of trade in such markets, we study a dynamic recontracting process similar to the one introduced by Serrano and Volij (2008). First, we analyze the set of recurrent classes of this process as a (non-empty) solution concept....

In the recent decade, capital outflows from emerging economies, in the form of a demand for liquid assets, have played a key role in the context of global imbalances. In this paper, we model the demand for liquid assets by firms in a dynamic open-economy macroeconomic model. We find that the...

This paper introduces a model of litigation in a growth framework. Investors use litigation to enforce their financial contracts with entrepreneurs. A contest ensues in which both agents hire lawyers to increase their probability of winning the trial. The issue and the cost of the contest...