In a general setting of private information, the possibility (impossibility) theorem is said to be valid, if a balanced and ex post efficient mechanism exists (does not exist) which agents voluntarily participate at. Possibility and impossibility results are called robust if they hold for all...

In this note we consider the problem whether contingent commodity allocations can be used when the states are not directly contractible. In such a setting a contingent commodity allocation takes the form of a social choice function, and the question is whether this function is implementable (in...

Quasimonotone individual demand correspondences are characterized as those which can be rationalized (in a weak sense) by a complete, upper continuous, monotone, and convex preference relation. Moreover, it is shown that an arbitrary set of demand observations can be rationalized by a reflexive,...

This paper develops a model of political consensus in order to explain the missing link between inequality and political redistribution. Political consensu s is an implicit agreement not to vote for extreme policy proposals. We show tha t such an agreement may play an efficiency-enhancing role....

The financial structure of firms is diverse. Firms issue many different types of financial claims. This article focuses on the seniority structure of debt contracts. It is outlined under what conditions firms can improve the outcome of their financial decisions by choosing seniority structure....

This paper deals with price regulation of a monopolistic distribution grid which sells a license to some retailer. The regulator aims at attaining efficient sale of the license and efficient relationship-specific investments of the agents. The first best can be attained by a sequential...

Consider a semiparametric model yi = xi' beta + g(ti )+ei; i = 1;2..., n, error ei are i.i.d. random variables from unknown distribution f(e). In this paper, we propose a nonlinear wavelet estimator ^f(e) of f(e) based on residuals ê =yi - ^yi here restriction of uniformly continuous on f(e)...

A term structure model with lognormal type volatility structure is proposed. The Heath, Jarrow and Morton (HJM) framework, coupled with the theory of stochastic evolution equations in infinite dimensions, is used to show that the resulting rates are well defined (they do not explode) and remain...

We develop a new approach to pricing and hedging contingent claims in incomplete markets. Mimicking as closely as possible in an incomplete markets framework the no--arbitrage arguments that have been developed in complete markets leads us to defining the concept of pseudo--arbitrage. Building...

Assuming constant interest rates Brennan and Schwartz (1976, 1979) obtained the rational insurance premium on an equity-linked insurance contract through the application of the theory of contingent claims pricing. Further considerations with deterministic interest rates have been discussed in...