We develop a model where firms profit from coercing workers into employment under conditions violating national law and international conventions and where bureaucrats benefit from accepting bribes from detected perpetrators. Firms and bureaucrats are hetero-geneous. Employers differ in their...

Information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection. This paper applies this sequence of tests to Mauritian slave auctions. Dynamic auction theory with private value highlights more aggressive bidding by uninformed bidders and higher prices when an informed...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....