This paper develops a formula to numerically estimate the unsubsidized, fair-market value of the toxic assets purchased with Federal Reserve loans. It finds that subsidy rates on these loans were on average 33.9 percent at origination. In contrast, by the 3rd quarter of the 2010, there was on...

Several papers have argued that firms can hide profits from unions with hard debt commitments. Alternatively, here we argue that unions can manipulate the non-shirking constraint and win higher efficiency wages. By creating a culture of mistrust and an opposition to supervision ex ante, unions...

This paper considers a community where contracting institutions are weak. If social sanctions against opportunism rise in times of stress, then some good projects may be born out of misfortune.

When ability complements effort, we would expect effort to increase with variables that proxy for ability. For example, we show that the hours worked by entrepreneurs should increase in experience, a proxy for ability. Yet, even if education is positively correlated with entrepreneurial ability,...

Charles Zheng (2009) purports to model the U.S. toxic asset auction plan. In the model, “moderately poor bidders outbid rich bidders in such auctions,” because poor bidders have less to lose by defaulting on taxpayer loans. Thus, says Zheng: “After defeating their rich rivals and acquiring...

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), or the $700 billion bailout, has been the subject of much academic interest. Here the rigorous studies on the programs of this massive intervention into the financial sector are reviewed. While considerable work has been done on the bank bailouts in the...

When entrants only differ in their exogenous entry costs, the order in which potential firms enter does not affect industry size. With discrete competitors, entry orderings can affect total sunk costs and the identity of entrants. A necessary and sufficient condition is established for sunk,...

This paper presents a closed form solution to the portfolio adjustment problem in discrete time when the investor faces fixed transaction costs. This transaction cost model assumes a mean-variance investor who wants to adjust her holdings of a risky and risk-free asset. It is shown how this...

This note ranks the Federal Reserves based on the tenure of their chairs from William McChesney Martin, Jr. to Janet L. Yellen, using data from 1958 through 2018. Inflation “doves” are willing to tolerate more inflation than inflation “hawks.” Comparing the Taylor (1993) rule and core...

This is the first study to look at the characteristics of funds accepting the $2.7 trillion taxpayer guarantee of money market mutual funds during the 2008 financial crisis. Fund shares that benefited from Federal Reserve's asset-backed commercial paper program were significantly more likely to...