I use the Prescott (1975) hotels model to explain variations in price dispersion across goods sold by supermarkets in Chicago. I extend the theory to accounts for the monopoly power of chains and for non-shoppers. The main empirical finding is that the effect of demand uncertainty on price...

We provide a new proof of the non-emptiness of approximate cores of games with many players of a finite number of types. Earlier papers in the literature proceed by showing that, for games with many players, equal-treatment cores of their "balanced cover games", which are non-empty, can be...

I use the Baumol-Tobin approach to examine the following propositions: (a) The optimal supply of liquidity requires a government loan program in addition to paying interest on reserves held by banks, (b) The adoption of the optimal policy will crowd out private credit arrangement and will thus...

I use a flexible price version of the Prescott (1975) “hotels” model to study a dynamic model that allows for storage. The formulation follows the standard competitive analysis tradition with a non-standard definition of markets: The set of markets that open depends on the state of demand. I...

I study the real effects of bubbles in a price-settingenvironment. Bubbles cause price dispersion and overinvestment in assets that are overvalued. And when they pop some goods are not sold and capacity is not fully utilized. I argue that a government monopoly on the creation of bubble assets is...

The paper analyzes the intermediation role of government under the assumption that it has an advantage over the private sector in collecting uncollateralized loan payments. It isshown that a government loan program may improve the welfare of all generations (including the current old generation)...

The paper investigates the role of the Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution () in determining the equity premium. This is done in an overlapping generations economy populated by agents that live for 2 periods and maximize a Kihlstrom-Mirman expected utility function. The equity premium...

I examine the implementation of the Friedman rule under the assumption that age dependent lump sum transfers are possible and private intermediation is costly. This is done both in an infinitely lived agents model and in an overlapping generations model. I argue that in addition to a zero...

The ``Federalist financial revolution'' may have jump-started the U.S. economy into modern growth, but the Free Banking System (1837-1862) did not play a direct role in sustaining it. Despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions, we find in county-level data that...

I examine the implementation of the Friedman rule under the assumption that age dependent lump sum transfers are possible and private intermediation is costly. This is done both in an infinitely lived agents model and in an overlapping generations model. I argue that in addition to a zero...