This paper looks at two features of globalization, namely productivity improvements and falling trade costs, and explores their effect on welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms and technological asymmetries. Contrary to received wisdom, and for reasons unrelated to...

In The Big Problem of Small Change, Sargent and Velde apply a cash-in-advance model to the history of coinage and to contemporary thought about coinage. They assert that their model accounts for puzzling observations involving the depreciation and disappearance of small coins. I question its...

The main justification for cash-in-advance (CIA) equilibria when there are multiple assets is a Shapley-Shubik trading-post model where the agents coordinate on a particular medium of exchange. Of course, there are other equilibria. We introduce a refinement and show that the CIA equilibrium...

This paper studies optimal nonlinear pricing for a monopolist when consumers' preferences exhibit temptation and self-control as in Gul and Pesendorfer (2001a). Consumers are subject to temptation inside the store but exercise self-control, and those foreseeing large self-control costs do not...

Strategy-proofness, requiring that truth-telling is a dominant strategy, is a standard concept used in social choice theory. Saijo et al. (2003) argue that this concept has serious drawbacks. In particular, announcing one's true preference may not be a unique dominant strategy, and almost all...

Strategy-proofness, requiring that truth-telling is a dominant strategy, is a standard concept in social choice theory. However, the concept of strategy-proofness has serious drawbacks. First, announcing one's true preference may not be a unique dominant strategy, and using the wrong dominant...

Existence of a monetary steady state is established for a random matching model with divisible goods, indivisible money, and take-it-or-leave-it offers by consumers. There is no restriction on individual money holdings. The background environment is that in papers by Shi and by Trejos and...

In this paper we examine and discuss estimates of fertility in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Currently, the United Nations estimates that the country's total fertility rate is 6.7, and national sources provide an even higher estimate of 7.3. However, our assessment of the data...

This chapter surveys the literatures on advertising bans and alcohol consumption or abuse, and advertising expenditures and alcohol consumption. Studies of state-level bans of billboards are examined as well as studies of international bans that cover broadcasting media. For expenditures, the...

This paper compares the effects of migration restrictions using licenses which are freely traded in a competitive labor market to those that occur when licenses are allocated to firms who are not permitted to trade them. There is reason to expect that a policy of making licenses non-transferable...