We measure the consequences of asymmetric information and imperfect competition in the Italian lending market. We show that banks’ optimal price response to an increase in adverse selection varies with competition. Exploiting matched data on loans and defaults, we estimate models of demand for...

How do individual preferences over welfare spending respond to economic hard times? In this paper we reconcile two prominent, opposing expectations : that recessions lead to a `hunkering down' such that individuals become less favorable to taxation and expenditure; and that downturns, being...

We analyze implications of market size on market structure in the not-forprofit sector. We show that, while a standard model of oligopolistic competition between for-profits predicts a positive relationship between market size and firm size, an analogous model of not-for-profit competition...

Catastrophic risk, rare events, and black swans are phenomena that require special attention in normative decision theory. Several papers by Chichilnisky integrate them into a single framework with finitely additive subjective probabilities. Some precursors include: (i) following Jones-Lee...

Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more...

We investigate whether and how the type of unemployment benefit institution affects productivity. We designed a field experiment to compare workers' productivity under a welfare system, where the unemployed receive an unconditional monetary transfer, with their productivity under a workfare...

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between officeholder and the electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the officeholder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has...

In general in organizations whose system of governance involves weighted majority voting, power and voting weight differ. Power indices are a value concept for majority voting games which provide a means of analyzing this difference. This paper provides new algorithms for computing the two...

It has long been recognised that one of the most important features of a production technology lies in its implications for managerial control over the production process. Amongst early writers, Charles Babbage observed : "One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check...

Little is known by economists about how emotions affect productivity. To make persuasive progress, some way has to be found to assign people exogenously to different feelings. We design a randomized trial. In it, some subjects have their happiness levels increased, while others in a control...