To solve the puzzle of attitudes toward debt buybacks, the authors use a model that combines considerations of debt overhang with the possibility of asymmetrical information between debtor countries and their creditors. In this environment, a debt overhang may create disincentives for a country...

This paper considers an economy in which a not-for-profit government seeks to minimize the cost to taxpayers of maintaining a constitutionally mandated free trading market economy while letting firms maximize market values. By free trading, I mean that the government does not (a) force merger...

The economy is modeled as a set of leveraged firms (including households) with potentially superior information who choose their assets to maximize their net-worth, while an efficient, not-for-profit government enacts and administers constitutional rules for free trading of goods, services and...