This paper refers to the ranking of densities that describe the distribution of an attribute in a given set of populations. The key elements of the problem are: (i) The distributions refer to ordered categorical data (e.g. health statuses, educational achievements, prestige positions,...

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we provide empirical evidence on the existence of a risk-taking channel in the US economy. By identifying a Bayesian VAR through sign restrictions, we find that an expansionary monetary policy shock causes a persistent increase in proxies for...

We develop a two-period model where banks invest in reserves and loans, and are subject to aggregate liquidity shocks. When banks face a a shortage of liquidity, they can sell loans on the interbank market. Two types of equilibria emerge. In the no default equilibrium, banks keep enough reserves...

Socio-economic performance differs not only across countries but within countries too and can persist even after religion, language, and formal institutions are long shared. One interpretation of these disparities is that successful regions are characterized by higher levels of trust, and, more...

In a model with bankruptcy costs and segmented deposit and equity markets, we endogenize the choice of bank and firm capital structure and the cost of equity and deposit finance. Despite risk neutrality, equity capital is more costly than deposits. When banks directly finance risky investments,...

We study with a sample of 1,070 primary school children, aged seven to eleven years, how altruism in a donation experiment is related to children’s risk attitudes and intertemporal choices. Examining such a relationship is motivated by theories of reciprocal altruism that provide a cornerstone...

Empirical literature on moral hazard focuses exclusively on the direct impact of asymmetric information on market outcomes, thus ignoring possible repercussions. We present a field experiment in which we consider a phenomenon that we call second-degree moral hazard – the tendency of the supply...

This paper quantifies the effects of credit spread and income shocks on aggregate house prices and households’ welfare. We address this issue within a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous households and occasionally binding collateral constraints. Credit spread...

This paper introduces asymmetric awareness into the classical principal-agent model and discusses the optimal contract between a fully aware principal and an unaware agent. The principal enlarges the agent's awareness strategically when proposing the contract. He faces a trade-off between...

We extend the model of risk sharing with limited commitment (Kocherlakota, 1996) by introducing both a public and a private (non-contractible and/or non-observable) storage technology. Positive public storage relaxes future participation constraints and may hence improve risk sharing, contrary...