We attempt to measure the effect of competition on bias in the context of analyst earnings forecasts, which are known to be excessively optimistic because of conflicts of interest. Our natural experiment for competition is mergers of brokerage houses, which result in the firing of analysts...

We examine the risk-taking behavior of money market funds during the financial crisis of 2007--2010. We find that (1) money market funds experienced an unprecedented expansion in their risk-taking opportunities; (2) funds had strong incentives to take on risk because fund inflows were highly...

This paper analyzes how organizations can minimize the costs of processing and communicating information. Communication is costly because it takes time for an agent to absorb new information sent by others. Agents can reduce this time by specializing in the processing of particular types of...

This paper develops a model of the breakup or unification of nations. In each nation the decision to separate is taken by majority voting. A basic trade-off between the efficiency gains of unification and the costs in terms of loss of control on political decisions is highlighted. The model...

The authors consider the case of a manufacturer who sells a homogeneous good to retailers who compe te in prices and "cum-sales" or "post-sales" services. They show that the optimal linear-price contract is inefficient from the point of view of the vertical structure and that simple forms of...

We propose an origination-and-contingent-distribution model of banking, in which liquidity demand by short-term investors (banks) can be met with cash reserves (inside liquidity) or sales of assets (outside liquidity) to long-term investors (hedge funds and pension funds). Outside liquidity is a...