This paper develops some general conditions under which complementarities between individual agents imply that assortative matching is efficient. Our analysis has four main findings. First, when agents are organized into equal-sized groups, just as in Becker (1973), the presence of within-group...

This paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes. Three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems. A general set of...

This paper considers the observational implications of social influences on adoption decisions for an environment of perfect foresight adopters. We argue that social influences can produce two observable effects: 1) discontinuities in unconditional adoption curves and 2) pattern reversals in...

Although the Russian economy performed poorly in the first seven years following the collapse of the USSR, the reforms of the 1990s laid the foundation for strong growth in 1998–2008. The early 2000s also saw successful reforms, such as the flat income tax and streamlined regulations....

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are a major source of individual patient level data (IPD) on the clinical outcomes, costs and other measures of health consequences associated with alternative healthcare interventions. These data are typically used to establish the ‘value for...

There is disagreement about whether large and complex financial institutions should be allowed to use US bankruptcy law to reorganise when they get into financial difficulty. We look at the events surrounding the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing for lessons as to whether bankruptcy law could be...

Lloyd Shapley is considered one of the pioneers of game theory. His most prominent contributions are the inception and study of value theory and core theory. These two theories are the key to solving problems involving the allocation of goods or payoffs achievable through cooperation....

After rapidly cutting short-term interest rates to their effective lower bounds during the financial crisis of 2008–09, central banks in the USA and UK turned to quantitative easing (QE) in order to sustain aggregate demand and avoid a Japanese style deflationary spiral. The European...