Global games of regime change -- that is, coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attacks it -- have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

This paper explores price formation when sellers are privately informed about their preferences and the quality of their asset. There are many equilibria, including a semi- separating one in which each seller's price depends on a one-dimensional index of her preferences and asset quality. This...

Most research on firm financing studies the choice between debt and equity. We model an alternative source - non-core asset sales - and allow asset sales to occur for operational as well as financing motives. We identify three new factors that drive a firm's choice between selling assets and...

We study the Rothschild-Stiglitz model of insurance markets, introducing endogenous information disclosure about insurance sales and purchases by firms and consumers. We show that a competitive equilibrium exists under unusually mild conditions, and characterize the unique equilibrium outcome....

We study the Rothschild-Stiglitz model of competitive insurance markets with endogenous information disclosure by both firms and consumers. We show that an equilibrium always exists, (even without the single crossing property), and characterize the unique equilibrium allocation. With two types...

But when the information structure itself is endogenous - firms and consumers decide what information about insurance purchases to reveal to whom - there always exists a Nash equilibrium. Strategies for firms consist of insurance contracts to offer and information-revelation strategies; for...

Recently, economists have developed methods for structural estimation of auction models. Many researchers object to these methods because they find the rationality assumptions used in these models to be implausible. In this paper, we explore whether structural auction models can generate...

This paper studies the bidding behavior of firms in U.S. Forest Service timber auctions in 1976--1990. When conducting timber auctions, the Forest Service publicly announces its estimates of the tract characteristics before the auction, and each bidder additionally has an opportunity to inspect...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to study a decentralized market where goods are differentiated and evaluations are private. We implement different semi-structured bargaining protocols based on deferred acceptance, and we compare their performance to the benchmark scenario of a sealed-bid...