In December 2008, the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) opened a new coffee platform that has transformed Ethiopia’s coffee trade. The way ECX handles coffee in a commodity fashion has eroded traceability, a characteristic sought after by overseas coffee buyers. This paper traces the forces...

In this paper we develop an analytical general equilibrium framework to measure the foreign exchange premium and the premium for non-tradable outlays for a country. The framework allows us to capture in a consistent manner the impacts of the sourcing of funds and their expenditure on tradable...

Can central counterparty (CCP) clearing control counterparty risk in the presence of risk taking that can aggravate such risk? When counterparty risk is not observable, I show that central clearing leads to higher collateral requirements for two different reasons. Without collusion about risk...

We set out a simple four sector macro model of the economy of the Roman Empire during a period of considerable economic prosperity. Our focus is on gold coins as currency and the seignorage which the government used to fund its activities. We solve numerically for a balanced growth...

We present an aggregate four good model (consumption, investment and two government goods) in which the current flows of one government good are in part pure public intermediate goods. The other public good has "final" services for households. We are interested in a benefit approach to charging...

Governments fund public universities based on the number of registered students and lump sum transfers. Such policy induces universities to compete for student recruitment. I show that such rule can lead to an inefficient allocation of resources in which universities compete for the same...

We examine how the introduction of self-control preferences influences the trade-off between two fundamental components of a public pension system: the contribution rate and its degree of redistribution. The pension regime affects individuals' welfare by altering how yielding to temptation (i.e....

This paper proposes a new estimator for least squares model averaging. A model average estimator is a weighted average of common estimates obtained from a set of models. We propose computing weights by minimizing a model average prediction criterion (MAPC). We prove that the MAPC estimator is...

I examine an environment where advertisers can "seed" word-of-mouth advertising by providing initial information about a product to specific users of a social network. Discussion over a social network generates spillover effects for firms when consumers can use the social network to inform each...

We set out a city as a price-taking exporter and importer with its own local structure (housing (land per household) and a local pure public good are produced endogenously). We improve labor efficiency in the export sector, observe a jump in the local wage, and trace the impact, particularly on...