To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the legal protection of either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm's input whose random cost is unverifiable and ex ante...

To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the legal protection of either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm's input whose random cost is unverifiable and ex ante...

To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the legal protection of either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm's input whose random cost is unverifiable and ex ante...

I study the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. Formal banks have access to unlimited funds but are unable to control the use of credit. Informal lenders can prevent non-diligent behavior but often lack the needed capital. The model implies that formal...

I study the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. While weak institutions constrain formal banks, shallow pockets hamper informal lenders. In such economies, informal finance has two effects. By increasing the investment return it decreases borrowers'...

This paper investigates the Chinese tariff pass-through mechanism. We estimate how market structure, specifically the size of the private sector, affects the transmission of prices from the border to consumers by using household survey data from urban China. Our results suggest that changes in...

This paper analyzes an informal financial institution that brings heterogeneous agents together in groups. We analyze decentralized matching into these groups, and the equilibrium composition of participants that consequently arises. We find that participants sort remarkably well across the...

I present a model that analyzes the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. Formal banks have access to unlimited funds but are unable to control the use of credit. Informal lenders can prevent non-diligent behavior but often lack the needed capital. The...

William J. Baumol has been one of the most influential economists in the last fifty years. Pioneering work in the theory of money, foremost research in the theory of competition, industrial organization and technological change, notable analyses in the theory of externalities and environment,...