Communal responsibility, a medieval institution studied by Greif (2006), supported the use of credit among European merchants in the absence of modern enforcement technologies. This paper shows how this mechanism helps to overcome enforcement problems in anonymous buyer/seller transactions. In a...

When should a necessary inconvenience be introduced gradually, and when should it be imposed all at once? The question is crucial to web content providers, who in order to generate revenue must sooner or later introduce advertisements, subscription fees, or other inconveniences. Assuming that...

Recent monetary search and Calvo-type models predict that the relationship between inflation and price dispersion is U-shaped, implying an optimal rate of inflation above zero. Moreover, monetary search models emphasize a critical dependence of the real effects of inflation on sellers' market...

Monetary search theory implies that the real effects of inflation via its impact on price dispersion depend on the level of search costs and, thus, on the level of market integration. For less integrated markets, the inflation-price dispersion nexus is predicted to be asymmetrically V-shaped...

We analyze the two goals behind the European Bologna Process of increasing student mobility: enabling graduates to develop multi-cultural skills and increasing the quality of universities. We isolate three effects: 1) a competition effect that raises quality; 2) a free rider effect that lowers...

We analyze the two goals behind the European Bologna Process of increasing student mobility: enabling graduates to develop multi-cultural skills and increasing the quality of universities. We isolate three effects: 1) a competition effect that raises quality; 2) a free rider effect that lowers...

We develop a dynamic model of political competition. Each party has a policymotivated ideological wing and an office-motivated opportunistic wing. A blockade arises if inner-party conflict stops policy implementation. We use this model to study whether early elections should be used to overcome...

We develop a model to analyze the determinants and effects of an endogenous imperfect transferability of human capital on natives and immigrants. The model reveals that high migration flows and high skill-transferability are mutually interdependent. Moreover, we show that high mobility within a...

Informal care has drawn much attention among scholars and policymakers as it concerns an essential but hard to evaluate resource of welfare. Albeit several studies addressed the monetary value of informal care, di erences in the relationship between caregivers and recipients have often been...

We study a matching model with heterogeneous agents, nontransferable utility and search frictions. Agents differ along a horizontal dimension (e.g. taste) and a vertical dimension (e.g. income). Agents' preferences coincide only in the vertical dimension. This approach introduces individual...