De Moivre’s book “The Doctrine of Chances” (2) is thorough account of what was known about probability and annuities. The proof that is the object of this paper is included in the very last pages of the book (pages 235-243). The aim of the present paper is to explicate De Moivre’s first...

According to Katz [6] some of the basic notions of probability existed in ancient civilizations. In The Talmud and in Roman calculations of annuities there is some evidence of this. However, no record of numerical probability calculations exists. Hald [5], Bernstein [1] and Katz [6] agree that...

This is a theoretic and econometric assessment of Peter Ferderer’s seminal paper published in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics with the same title in 1993. New data shows that high forecaster discords coincide with a decrease in Investment expenditure. Specifically, the forecaster...

The logical derivation of the two-factors model (The CAPM) is not empirically testable. This has paved the way for new treatments of asset pricing. However, the deterministic approach taken by most economists has prevented them to create a more useful treatment to the problems of asset pricing...

"Rejecting much of mainstream economic theory for being too passive, this book argues that the innovative and unpredictable nature of economic phenomena is better understood with analytical devices which allow for more creative and participatory analysis. As is demonstrated, this has significant...

Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and...

We present an international trade model with multiproduct firms. Firms are heterogeneously endowed with two types of capabilities that jointly determine the trade-off within firms between managing a large portfolio of products and producing at low marginal cost. The model can explain many of the...

This paper reports data from a laboratory experiment on two-period moral hazard problems. The findings corroborate the contract-theoretic insight that even though the periods are technologically unrelated, due to incentive considerations principals can benefit from offering long-term contracts...

We study a continuous-time game of strategic experimentation in which the players try to assess the failure rate of some new equipment or technology. Breakdowns occur at the jump times of a Poisson process whose unknown intensity is either high or low. In marked contrast to existing models, we...

We study endogenous group formation in tournaments employing experimental three-player contests. We find that players in endogenously formed alliances cope better with the moral hazard problem in groups than players who are forced into an alliance. Also, players who are committed to expending...