We consider a tax competition game between asymmetrically un-informed governments. Two governments simultaneously propose tax arrangements to attract a multinational firm (MNF) which has an ex-ante preference to operate in both countries, and governments anticipate that once the MNF accepts...

Abstract: This paper studies fiscal federalism when voter information varies across regions. We develop a model of political agency with heterogeneously informed voters. Rentseeking politicians provide public goods to win the votes of the informed. As a result, rent extraction is lower in...

This paper offers an explanation of rationally incomplete contracts where incompleteness refers to unforeseen contingencies. Agents enter a relationship with two-sided moral hazard in which a commitment to discard parts of the joint resources may be ex ante efficient. This happens through costly...

Abstract: We implement a trust game in which the trustee can write a free-form pre-play message for the trustor. The main twist in our design is that there is a 50% probability that the message is delivered to the trustor and a 50% probability that the message is replaced by an empty sheet. We...

This paper studies how credit constraints develop over bank relationships. I analyze a unique dataset of matched loan application and loan contract information and measure credit constraints as the ratio of requested to granted loan amounts. I find that the most important determinants of...

This paper presents a principal-agent model where the agent has multiple, or imprecise, beliefs. We model this situation formally by assuming the agent's preferences are incomplete. One can interpret this multiplicity as an agent's limited knowledge of the surrounding environment. In this...

Why do fundraisers announce initial contributions to their charity?Potential explanations are that these announcements cause future donors to increase their contributions, either because they want to reciprocate the generosity of earlier donors, or because the initial contributions are seen as a...

We study the economic role of banks’ soft information, which evolved from repeated lending relationships, in the context of loan default. Using a proprietary database from one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in China, we find that the bank’s internal credit rating scores play a...

Standard insurance models predict that people with high (health) risks have high insurance coverage. It is empirically documented that people with high income have lower health risks and are better insured. We show that income differences between risk types lead to a violation of single crossing...