Empirically, a higher frequency of lightning strikes is associated with slower growth in labor productivity across the 48 contiguous US states after 1990; before 1990 there is no correlation between growth and lightning. Other climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall and tornadoes) do not...

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse a simple bubble model suggested by Blanchard and Watson. The model is defined by y(t) =s(t)ρy(t-1) ε(t), t=1,…,n, where s(t) is an i.i.d. binary variable with p=P(s(t)=1), independent of ε(t) i.i.d. with mean zero and finite variance. We take...

It is well known that if X(t) is a nonstationary process and Y(t) is a linear function of X(t), then cointegration of Y(t) implies cointegration of X(t). We want to find an analogous result for common trends if X(t) is generated by a finite order VAR. We first show that Y(t) has an infinite...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefiting from a real effort task in which the agents' effort/performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals....

For n-person bargaining problems the family of proportional solutions (introduced and characterized by Kalai) is generalized to bargaining problems with non-convex payoff sets. The so-called “efficient proportional solutions”are characterized axiomatically using natural extensions of the...

This paper, which is prepared for the Inaugural Conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in King's College, Cambridge, 8-11 April 2010, questions the preeminence of theory over empirics in economics and argues that empirical econometrics needs to be given a more important and...

In a binary prediction market in which risk-neutral traders have heterogeneous prior beliefs and are allowed to invest a limited amount of money, the static rational expectations equilibrium price is demonstrated to underreact to information. This effect is consistent with a favorite-longshot...

This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling...

A dynamic pure-exchange general equilibrium model with uncertainty is studied. Fundamentals are supposed to depend continuously on states of nature. It is shown that: 1. if financial markets are complete, then asset prices vary continuously with states of nature, and; 2. if financial markets are...

We consider the problem of determining the individual preference rankings that are necessarily implied by a dataset consisting of prices, income distributions and total resources. We show the equivalence between the compatibility with individual preference rankings and the existence of a...