Measuring risk aversion is sensitive to assumptions about the wealth in subjects' utility functions. Data from the same subjects in low- and high-stake lottery decisions allow estimating the wealth in a pre-specified one-parameter utility function simultaneously with risk aversion. This paper...

It is an open question whether and how indexed wage contracts reduce welfare or raise average inflation. This paper analyzes the impact of indexed wage contracts on inflation and social welfare in a Barro Gordon model with discretionary monetary policy by endogenizing social costs of indexation....

In symmetric binary-choice coordination games, the global-game selection (GGS) has been proven to predict a high proportion of observed choices correctly. In these games, the GGS is identical to the best response to Laplacian beliefs about the fraction of players choosing either action. This...

In currency exchange markets, there is a conflict between individual decisions and the socially optimal solution. Whereas agents have a coordination motive to take the same position, at the social level effective market coordination per se is not socially valuable, and the central bank aims at...

This paper explores three aspects of strategic uncertainty: its relation to risk, predictability of behavior and subjective beliefs of players. In a laboratory experiment we measure subjects ̕certainty equivalents for three coordination games and one lottery. Behavior in coordination games is...

Empirical evidence suggests that even those firms presumably most in need of monitoring-intensive financing (young, small, and innovative firms) have a multitude of bank lenders, where one may be special in the sense of relationship lending. However, theory does not tell us a lot about the...

We present an experiment in which extrinsic information (signals) may generate sunspot equilibria. The underlying coordination game has a unique symmetric non-sunspot equilibrium, which is also risk-dominant. Other equilibria can be ordered according to risk dominance. We introduce salient but...

Speculative Attacks can be modelled as a coordination game with multiple equilibria if the state of the economy is common knowledge. With private information there is a unique equilibrium. This raises the question whether public information may be destabilizing by allowing for self-fulfilling...

This paper reconsiders the principal's problem of determining the optimal combination of risk taking and information dissemination, when threatened with a coordinated speculative attack on the fixed exchange rate by traders, respectively a coordinated withdrawal of credits by a group of lenders....