We construct a simple probit model of the determinants of real house price slump endings.  We find that the probability of a house price slump ending is higher, the smaller was the pre-slump house price run-up; the greater has been the cumualtive house price decline; the lower are real mortgage...

This paper extends the standard model of bundling to allow products to be substitutes and for products to be supplied by separate sellers.  Whether integrated or separate, firms have an incentive to introduce a bundling discount when demand for the bundle is elastic relative to demand for...

Rational demand for hedging products, where there is a risk of contractual nonperformance, is fundamentally different to that for indemnity insurance.  In particular, optimal demand is zero for infinitely risk averse individuals, and is nonmonotonic in risk aversion, wealth and price.  For...

This paper analyses collusion-proof multilateral insurance contracts between a risk neutral insurer and multiple risk averse agents in an environment of asymmetric costly state verification.  Optimal contracts involve the group of agents pooling uncertainty and the insurer acting as reinsurer...

This paper investigates the interaction between corruption and infrastructure policy reforms.  I construct a simple model to illustrate how both an incerase in regulatory autonomy and privatisation may influence the effect of corruption.  This interaction is then analysed empirically using a...

A common sales tactic is for a seller to encourage a potential customer to make her purchase decision quickly, before she can investigate rival deals in the market.  We consider a market with sequential consumer search in which firms can achieve this either by making an exploding offer (which...

This study outlines a new theory linking industrial structure to optimal employment contracts and value reducing risk taking.  Firms hire their executives using optimal contracts derived within a competitive labour market.  To motivate effort firms must use some variable remuneration.  Such...

Alpha is the amount by which the returns from a given asset exceed the returns from the wider market.  The standard way of estimating alpha is to correct for correlation with the market by regressing the asset's returns against the market returns over an extended period of time and then apply...

The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones.  We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate...

Stochastic learning models provide sharp predictions about equilibrium selection when the noise level of the learning process is taken to zero.  The difficulty is that, when the noise is extremely small, it can take an extremely long time for a large population to reach the stochastically...