A basic moral hazard problem has potential to avoid socially beneficial development of natural resources. Various financial assurance mechanisms have evolved to satisfy regulatory requirements for credible environmental protection. But recent macroeconomic and financial market developments have...

In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory that gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can pay a cost to access a central database that tracks payments made and received. Incentives must be provided to agents to...

We examine incentives for network-specific investment and consider the implications for network governance. We model a two-sided market in which participants making payments over a network platform can invest in a technology that reduces the marginal cost of using the platform. A network effect...

I present evidence to suggest that an important share of the apparent geographic localization of spillovers from industrial R&D may be an artifact of other agglomerative forces. A production-function framework is used to examine the role of geographic and technological proximity for interfirm...