We propose a new welfare criterion that allows us to rank alternative financial market structures in the presence of belief heterogeneity. We analyze economies with complete and incomplete financial markets and/or restricted trading possibilities in the form of borrowing limits or transaction...

Social interactions provide a set of incentives for regulating individual behavior. Chief among these is stigma, the status loss and discrimination that results from the display of stigmatized attributes or behaviors. The stigmatization of behavior is the enforcement mechanism behind social...

While interest in social determinants of individual behavior has led to a rich theoretical literature and many efforts to measure these influences, a mature social econometrics has yet to emerge. This chapter provides a critical overview of the identification of social interactions. We consider...

This article provides an overview of Google, focusing on its economic history, specifically on three topics of interest: the ad auction, the IPO auction and the role of economics at Google.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), or the $700 billion bailout, has been the subject of much academic interest. Here the rigorous studies on the programs of this massive intervention into the financial sector are reviewed. While considerable work has been done on the bank bailouts in the...

This article provides an overview of the new opportunities and challenges for copyright and trademark law and economics research created by the Internet. It reviews the relevant literature in the field of copyright law, in particular as it relates to piracy, liability and market structure,...

The concept of fiscal multipliers is examined in the context of the major theoretical approaches. Differing methods of calculating multipliers are then recounted (structural equations, VAR, simulation). The sensitivity of estimates to conditioning on the state of the economy (slack, financial...

While many conjectured that the information-rich and frictionless nature of online markets would result in marginal cost pricing, this has proved not to be the case. Price dispersion online is ubiquitous. The main reason is that price discovery occurs through platforms that have an incentive to...

Peter Diamond has made fundamental contributions to economic theory over a wide range of areas including search theory and its implications for unemployment (for which he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize), optimal taxation, which he pioneered with James Mirrlees, incomplete markets and their...

This article examines the strategies, successes and failures of economic development in Latin America since 1870. We divide the analysis into four key development phases: primary export-led growth (1870–1929), import substitution industrialisation (1945–82), debt crisis (1980s) and...