Since 2013 regulators have been investigating the activities of some of the world's largest banks around the setting of daily benchmarks for forex prices. These benchmarks are a key linchpin of world financial markets, providing standardize prices used to value global equity and bond portfolios,...

Using data from an experiment conducted in 70 Colombian communities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when trust is crucial to enforce risk pooling arrangements. We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and social networks. Both theoretically and empirically, we find that close...

We assess the consequences of substantially increasing the marginal tax rate on U.S. top earners using a human capital model. The top of the model Laffer curve occurs at a 53 percent top tax rate. Tax revenues and the tax rate at the top of the Laffer curve are smaller compared to an otherwise...

This paper describes a new analytical framework for the quantitative assessment of international external positions. The framework links each country's current net foreign asset position to its current trade flows, forecasts of future trade flows, and expectations concerning future returns on...

An Inequality involving expectations of functions of a random variable is presented and shown to provide the key to the comparative statics of an important class of problems arising in Economics and Finance. The inequality in question is also shown to yield novel generalizations of the...

In this paper, we demonstrate the efficiency of seller entry in a model of competing auctions. We generalize the competitive search literature by simultaneously allowing for nonrival (many on one) meetings and private information. We consider both the case in which buyers learn their valuations...

Starting in the 1970s California's residential electricity consumption per capita stopped increasing, while other states' electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. Had other states' energy use followed...

Chapter in Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, Joshua Teitelbaum and Kathryn Zeiler (editors)

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of monopoly differential pricing in the important but largely neglected case where marginal costs of service differ across consumer groups. Compared to uniform pricing, cost-based differential pricing generally raises total welfare. Although total output...

Researchers have long been interested in whether environmental regulations discourage investment, reduce labour demand, or alter patterns of international trade. But estimating those consequences of regulations requires devising a means of measuring their stringency empirically. While creating...