Technology transfer offers global firms an opportunity to reduce the costs involved in serving emerging markets as well as to source from low-cost locations for their home markets. However, it also poses a potential risk of imitation by local competitors who may enter the market(s). We introduce...

This paper studies the accounting treatment of uncertainty and how it affects a firm's capital structure. We distinguish two sources of uncertainty that raise reliability concerns: inherent uncertainty and incentive uncertainty. By inherent uncertainty, we refer to uncertainty about the quality...

Recent analysis by Clarida, Galí, and Gertler (1999), Jensen (2002), Svensson and Woodford (1999), Walsh (2002), and especially Woodford (1999a, 1999b, 2000) has been highly productive in advancing the profession’s understanding of optimal monetary policy. Specifically, these papers emphasize...

This paper presents a competitive rational expectations model of spot and forward prices for multiple commodities that can be stored and/or converted. As a result of the conversion option, an equilibrium theory of basis spreads across commodities is derived. This extends the "theory of storage"...

An increasingly popular practice for student assignment to public schools in the U.S. is the use of school choice systems. The celebrated Gale-Shapley student-optimal stable mechanism (SOSM) has recently replaced two de…ficient student assignment mechanisms that were in use in New York City...

Many retailers find it useful to partition customers into multiple classes based on certain characteristics. We consider the case in which customers are primarily distinguished by whether they are willing to wait for backordered demand. A firm that faces demand from customers that are...

Since natural gas reserves in North America and Europe are declining, energy companies there can no longer create value by just drilling more wells; they must create value by better managing their current production assets, and by better leveraging technology. In this paper, we analyze the real...

What is the effect of non-tradeable idiosyncratic risk on asset-market risk premiums? Constantinides and Duffie (1996) and Mankiw (1986) have shown that risk premiums will increase if the idiosyncratic shocks become more volatile during economic contractions. We add two important ingredients to...

In this paper, we depict and analyze simple models of moral hazard, namely “operating moral hazard” and “investing moral hazard.” First we assume that a corporation exists primarily for the benefit of their shareholders. Then, moral hazard occurs when managers choose an option knowingly...

The Tuscan Lifestyles case (Mason 2003) offers a simple twist on the standard view of how to value a newly acquired customer, highlighting how standard retention-based approaches to the calculation of expected CLV are not applicable in a noncontractual setting. Using the data presented in the...