A series of recent papers investigated the desirability of randomization of insurance contracts in the presence of moral hazard. All treat a continuum of possible outcomes, which tends to obscure the intuition. In this paper, we treat the two-outcome case, employing derivations which highlight...

A group of prominent international economists got together to develop an urgent call for change. As they say, the European Union became an Austerity Union. Their call for new policies includes a focus on growth and employment, reducing inequality, reforming banking, and new taxes and social...

This paper examines the impact of financial market imperfections on long-term productivity growth. It focuses on failures in markets for the sale of equity securities and hence on the failure of markets which help firms diversify the risks of real investment. The paper examines separately...

In this paper we propose an interpretation of the current Global Financial Crisis which emphasizes sectoral dislocation following localized technical change in the presence of barriers to labor mobility. This tale is reminiscent of a similar tale concerning the Great Depression. In the 30s...

We explore the dynamics of default cascades in a network of credit interlink-ages in which each agent is at the same time a borrower and a lender. When some counterparties of an agent default, the loss she experiences amounts to her total exposure to those counterparties. A possible conjecture...

The recent financial crisis poses the challenge to understand how systemic risk arises endogenously and what architecture can make the financial system more resilient to global crises. This paper shows that a financial network can be most resilient for intermediate levels of risk...