This paper tries to reconcile the observed fact that suicide-terrorists have a relatively high education level with rationality. It brings out the conditions under which potential students choose to acquire some education in a rational-choice model where this yields a non-zero probability of...

We test the hypothesis that "genuine" or "convincing" smiling is a costly signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees in a trust game made video clips for viewing by potential trusters before the latter decided whether to send them...

We find evidence of significant price manipulation at the stock level by hedge funds on critical reporting dates. Stocks in the top quartile by hedge fund holdings exhibit abnormal returns of 30 basis points in the last day of the month and a reversal of 25 basis points in the following day....

This paper examines whether retailer bargaining power and upfront slotting allowances prevent small manufacturers (who have no bargaining power) from obtaining adequate distribution. In contrast to the findings of Marx and Shaffer (2007), who showed that all equilibria involve limited...

The paper aims at studying determinants of schooling in traditional hierarchical societies confronted with an established history of outmigration. In the village, a ruling caste controls local political and religious institutions. For children who do not belong to the ruling caste, migration is...

The aim of this paper is to highlight empirically some important worldwide differences in the impact of privatization of the fixed-line telecommunications operator on network expansion, tariffs, and efficiency during the 1985-2007 period for a large panel of countries. Our work suggests that the...

What is the best way to reward innovation? While prizes avoid deadweight loss, intellectual property screens out projects generating low consumer surplus per unit sold. We build a model that formalizes this trade-off and develop tools for solving the resulting multidimensional screening problem....

We study the reaction of financial markets to aggregate liquidity shocks when traders face cognition limits. While each financial institution recovers from the shock at a random time, the trader representing the institution observes this recovery with a delay, reecting the time it takes to...

Somaliland has recently developed an unexpected democracy after seceding from chaos-ridden Somalia, while turning its port of Berbera into a success story, competing successfully with the long established ones in the Horn of Africa. A simple game-theoretic model is used to explain why the...

We formulate and estimate a structural model for travel demand, in which users have hetero- geneous preferences and make their transport decisions considering the network congestion. A key component in the model is that users have incomplete information about the preferences of other users in...