Two parties sign a contract but before they fully perform they modify the contract. Should courts enforce the modified agreement? The modification may enable efficient trade in response to changed circumstances, or one party may have made an efficient relationship-specific investment and then...

Blockchain technology offers firms a novel method of raising capital, via so-called Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In the most novel form of an ICO, a firm creates digital assets called "utility tokens" that are tracked on a blockchain-based ledger; requires that its product be purchased only...

Managing the outbreak of COVID-19 in India constitutes an unprecedented health emergency in one of the largest and most diverse nations in the world. On May 4, 2020, India started the process of releasing its population from a national lockdown during which extreme social distancing was...

We analyze the financial value of insurance when individuals have access to credit markets. Loans allow consumers to smooth shocks across time, decreasing the value of the smoothing (across states of the world) provided by insurance. We derive a simple formula for the incremental value of...

If two defendants share a joint and several liability and the first becomes insolvent, his unpaid liabilities are reallocated to the second. While the second defendant's assets may cover its share of liability, they may not cover the first defendant's share. Thus, the one defendant's insolvency...

We report on a large randomized controlled trial of hospital insurance for above-poverty-line Indian households. Households were assigned to free insurance, sale of insurance, sale plus cash transfer, or control. To estimate spillovers, the fraction of households offered insurance varied across...

It is well-established that non-profit hospitals employ performance bonuses with much lower frequency than for-profit hospitals. Weisbrod (1999, 2003a, 2003b) suggest that this implies that principals of non-profit and for-profit firms have different objectives or purposes. Brickley and Van Horn...

A basic problem in contracting is holdup: after one party has made relationship-specific investments, the other party refuses to perform unless the first one offers better terms than the original contract. Such renegotiation deters relationship-specific investments and reduces the value of trade...