Using a unique newly constructed data set on Israeli IPO firms in the 1990s, we study costs and benefits of universal banking. The post-issue accounting profitability of firms underwritten by bank affiliated underwriters that were also borrowers from the same bank in the IPO year, is...

The paper contributes to the debate abouyt whether market incentives induce excessive concentration of the urban population in cities that are too large. It answers two related questions which have not been satisfactorily answered in the existing literature. The first is whether the very...

I consider two seemingly unrelated puzzles; 1. Why is relative performance evaluation (RPE) used less in CEo compensation than agency theory suggests? 2. Why is sometimes, e.g., for fund managers, a mediocre performance more highly rewarded than excellence? I consider a simple tournament model,...

We develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with non-transferable utility, and prove that the principals'Nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action. We apply this theory to construct a positive model of public finance, where...