This paper presents a bargaining model between individuals belonging to different groups where the equilibrium outcome depends on the communication network within each group.  Belonging to a group gives an informational advantage: connections help to gather information about past transactions...

China has had a remarkably high ratio of investment to output throughout the period of economic reform, surpassing almost all other economies, whether developed or developing.  The high investment rate is in turn an important proximate determinant of China's high rate of economic growth.  This...

Epstein (2009) describes three Ellsberg-style thought experiments and argues that they pose difficulties for the smooth ambiguity model of decision making under uncertainty developed by Klibanoff, Marinacci and Mukerji (2005).  We revisit these thought exeperiments and find, to the contrary,...

In this note, we present a novel computerized real effort task based on moving sliders across a screen which overcomes many of the drawbacks of existing real effort tasks.  The task was first developed and used by us in Gill and Prowse (2009).  We outline the design of our "slider task",...

One of the most controversial questions in current competition policy is when, if ever, should competition law require a firm with market power to share its property, notably intellectual property, with its rivals?  And if supply is required, on what terms?  These questions are discussed with...

This paper analyses GATT/WTO trade negotiations in an oligopolistic multi-country setting and identifies a new rationale for trade agreements.  When set unilaterally, tariffs are inefficiently high, both for familiar terms-of-trade reasons, but also to restrict market access of foreign firms. ...

We develop a novel computerized real effort task, based on moving sliders across a screen, to test experimentally whether agents are disappointment averse when they compete in a real effort sequential-move tournament.  Our theory predicts that a disappointment averse agent, who is loss averse...

This paper reviews the scientific contributions of Paul Krugman to the study of international trade, on the occasion of his receipt of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.  A simplified exposition is presented of some of his principal findings, including: the effects of trade on firm...

In this paper, the monetary policy independence of European nations in the years before European Monetary Union (EMU) is investigated using cointegration techniques.  Daily data is used to assess pairwise relationships between individual EMU nations and 'lead' nation Germany, to assess the...

The paper uses an appropriate survey from rural China to answer the question: Is happiness infectious, i.e. does the happiness of an individual depend positively on the happiness of their reference group?  The evidence is consistent with this hypothesis, but the challenge is to solve the...