From a game theoretic point of view, fraudulent accounting to embellish the financial status of a firm and the use of drugs to enhance performance in sports are very similar. We study the replicator dynamics of both applications within the same model. We allow for heterogenous populations, such...

We extend the Lucas asset pricing tree economy to a heterogeneous population. Perturbative methods are applied to explicitly calculate the second order response of returns to heterogeneity. We determine the status of various stylized facts. For example, we find that the equity premium always...

We consider the problem of allocating a tariff-rate quota among a small number of firms which act as middlemen between competitive producers and atomistic consumers and can import a perfect substitute at a fixed world price. We compare the traditional license-on-demand regime to administer such...

We review different kinds of corruption that have been observed in procurement auctions and categorize them. We discuss means to avoid corruption, by choice of preferable auction formats, or with the help of technological tools, such as secure electronic bidding systems. Auctions that involve...

Central banks normally accept debt of their own governments as collateral in liquidity operations without reservations. This gives rise to a valuable liquidity premium that reduces the cost of government finance. The ECB is an interesting exception in this respect. It relies on external...

Settling transactions in a payment system imposes opportunity costs of holding liquidity on the participating banks. A measure of these costs is the turnover ratio, defined as the value of payments a bank makes per unit of overnight central bank balances. We assume that a bank can increase its...

Ever since Friedman's (1960) contribution, there has been an ongoing controversy about whether the Treasury should auction off its government debt with a discriminatory or with a uniform price format. Many industrialized countries, the United States or Germany, for instance, use discriminatory...

In many auctions, the auctioneer is an agent of the seller. This invites corruption. We propose a model of corruption in which the auctioneer orchestrates bid rigging by inviting a bidder to either lower or raise his bid, whichever is more profitable. We characterize equilibrium bidding in...

In many auctions, the auctioneer is an agent of the seller. This delegation invites corruption. In this paper we propose a model of corruption, examine how corruption affects the auction game, how the anticipation of corruption affects bidding, and how it altogether changes the revenue ranking...