We use mechanism design to study efficient intertemporal payment arrangements when the ability of agents to perform certain welfare-improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. Efficiency is achieved via a payment system that assigns balances to participants, adjusts them...

We study economies where improving the quality of institutions - modeled as improving contract enforcement - requires resources, but enables trade that raises output by reducing the dispersion of marginal products of capital. We find that in this type of environment it is optimal to combine...

We use mechanism design to study efficient intertemporal payment arrangements when the ability of agents to perform certain welfare-improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. Efficiency is achieved via a payment system that assigns balances to participants, adjusts them...

We use mechanism design in order to study efficient arrangements when the ability of agents to perform certain welfare-improving transactions is subject to random and unobservable shocks. We study implementation via a payment system that involves assigning balances to participants and optimally...

This paper describes optimal contracts in a dynamic costly state verification model with stochastic monitoring. An agent operates a risky project on behalf of a principal over several periods. Each period, the principal can observe the revenues from the project provided he incurs a fixed cost....

We describe a dynamic model of financial intermediation in which fundamental characteristics of the economy imply a unique equilibrium path of bank and financial market lending. Yet we also show that economies whose fundamental characteristics have converged may continue to have very different...

In a canonical model of borrowing and lending, an exclusion technology that features full exclusion for a deterministic number of periods following default maximizes stationary equilibrium welfare. This exclusion policy maximizes the stationary volume of mutually beneficial lending transactions....