Founded in 1932 by a newspaper heir disillusioned by the failure of forecasters to predict the Great Crash, the Cowles Commission promoted the use of formal mathematical and statistical methods in economics, initially through summer research conferences in Colorado and through support of the...

We propose a criterion for determining whether a local policy analysis can be made in a given equilibrium in an overlapping generations model. The criterion can be applied to models with infinite past and future as well as those with a truncated past. The equilibrium is not necessarily a steady...

We study how cultural distance affects the rejection of imposed institutions. To this purpose, we exploit the transplantation of Piedmontese institutions on Southern Italy which occurred during the Italian unification. We assemble a novel and unique dataset containing information on episodes of...

We study how cultural distance affects the rejection of imposed institutions. To do so, we exploit the transplantation of Piedmontese institutions on Southern Italy that occurred during the Italian unification. We assemble a novel and unique dataset containing municipal-level information on...

We analyze games of incomplete information and offer equilibrium predictions which are valid for, and in this sense robust to, all possible private information structures that the agents may have. We completely characterize the set of Bayes correlated equilibria in a class of games with...

We define a notion of correlated equilibrium for games with incomplete information in a general setting with finite players, finite actions, and finite states, which we call Bayes correlated equilibrium. The set of Bayes correlated equilibria of a fixed incomplete information game equals the set...

We study optimal contracting in team settings, featuring stylized aspects of production environments with complex tasks. Agents have many opportunities to shirk, task-level monitoring is needed to provide useful incentives, and because it is difficult to write individual performance into formal...

We analyze games of incomplete information and offer equilibrium predictions which are valid for all possible private information structures that the agents may have. Our characterization of these robust predictions relies on an epistemic result which establishes a relationship between the set...

Three models of a monetary economy are considered, in order to show the effects of a gold demonetization: the first with a gold money, the second with demonetized gold but no central bank, and the third with demonetized gold, but with a central bank. The distinctions between ownership and...

This note constructs an efficient mechanism for finding the best candidate for a committee from a sequence of potential candidates. Committee members have independent private values information about the quality of the candidate. The mechanism selects the best candidate according to the standard...