Gift giving is thought to be welfare decreasing. This claim rests on two key assumptions, namely, full information as to the whereabouts of all goods and the ability to reach the stores that contain desired goods costlessly. In this paper, we replace these two assumptions with the more realistic...

An approximation to order T-2 is obtained for the bias of the least-squares estimator in the stationary ARX model which yields generalisations of Kendall's and White's classic results for particular variants of AR(1) models. The results show that generally the second-order approximation is...

To study fully endogenous ageing alongside growth and their implications, this paper sets up an OLG economy in which the life expectancy of agents is endogenous. Agents are bearers of children, investors in education and producers and consumers of output. Retirement decision in the last period...

This paper surveys existing explanations for the use of collateral in credit markets and relates them to the empirical evidence on the subject. Collateral may be used as a screening or an incentive device in markets characterized by various forms of asymmetric and biased information. The...

This paper proposes a similar unit root testing procedure for heterogeneous dynamic panel data, based on the score principle, assuming that the time dimension of the panel is fixed. It is shown that the limiting distribution of the test is standard normal. The similarity with regard to the...

This note shows that the government can achieve its precommitment outcome in monetary policy when output follows an autoregressive process, by offering the central banker a linear contract, and where the parameters of the contract depend on lagged output. This note therefore offers an extension...

This paper shows that delegation of monetary policy to a central banker (CB) who is conservative in Rogoff's sense can still be desireable even though the government is able to set employment and/or inflation targets for the CB. A necessary and sufficient condition for Rogoff-conservatism is...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of firms' credit ratings, in the context of a multi-period moral hazard problem, in which borrowers have incentives to repudiate their debt obligations. Borrowers with short credit histories face the poorest incentives, and (depending on initial conditions) for...

This paper provides strategic foundations for the insight that the bargaining power of employees depends on the firms'labour turnover costs.

This paper investigates the determinants of price dispersion between staple and non-staple goods in grocery retailing, as the result of pricing decisions of multiproduct firms. Contradictory theoretical predictions about the nature of supermarkets' pricing behaviour are compared by highlighting...