This paper explores the effects of relative food prices on body weight and body fat over time in China. We study a cohort of 15,000 adults from over 200 communities in China, using the longitudinal China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991-2006). While we find that decreases in the price of...

An informational role of policy arises in economies where large fluctuations are triggered by selffulfilling expectation switches between efficient "optimism" and inefficient "pessimism," a feature that is common in many dynamic economies with coordination failures. Policy affects the...

How should policy be optimally designed when a monetary authority faces a private sector that is skeptical about policy announcements and makes inferences about the monetary authority’s ability to follow through on policy plans from economic data? To provide an answer to this question, we...

We study the role rumors play in revolutions using a global game model. Agents with diverse private information rationally evaluate the informativeness of rumors about the regime strength. Without communication among agents, wild rumors are discounted and agents are generally less responsive to...

We examine whether strong networks among incumbent venture capitalists (VCs) in local markets help restrict entry by outside VCs, thus improving incumbents' bargaining power over entrepreneurs. More densely networked markets experience less entry, with a one-standard deviation increase in...

How should policy be optimally designed when a monetary authority faces a private sector that is somewhat skeptical about policy announcements and which interprets economic data as providing evidence about the monetary authority's preferences or its ability to carry through on policy plans? To...