The power exchange and the real-time markets used by the system operator differ in how system constraints are managed. This can result in regulatory arbitrage, which can increase consumer costs, increase the risk of power outages and distort investment incentives. This paper uses a...

Although anthropologists along with historians and academic circles point to no ethnographic evidence to confirm or deny the existence of barter among the prehistoric people in the new Stone Age (the Neolithic epoch during 9000-6000 BC.), the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith believed...

This paper examines how pharmaceutical firms have responded to changes in intellectual property rights and trade barriers that legalized "parallel imports" within the European Union. The threat of arbitrage by parallel traders reduces the ability of firms to price discriminate across countries....

Does market interaction influence morality? We study a particular angle of this classic question theoretically and experimentally. The novelty of our approach is to posit that people are motivated by reciprocity; an urge many argued affects humans. We scrutinize how this shapes interaction in...

This paper analyzes the causes and consequences of non-monetary transactions in Russia, drawing on a large enterprise survey. We show that barter and offsets are linked to liquidity problems at the level of the firm and to arrears in particular. We find evidence that the state has channeled...