This paper shows that the means-end rationality principle, as an ‘ultimate given’ of economics, delimits the faculty of economists to observe, describe and understand the manifold human behavior. Given such epistemological limitations, as a descriptive science, the main task of economics is...

This paper investigates product-specific scale economies of banks with respect to off-balance sheet operations. The cost benefits from the non-separability of outputs available to banks that imply the role of OBS activities on bank scale economies are also examined. We further test whether the...

This paper applies a two-stage procedure of non-parametric testing and business cycle dating techniques to examine the ripple effect of housing prices among Chinese cities since 2006. Empirical analysis indicates that housing prices fluctuations among nineteen Chinese cities do have ripple...

This paper studies the Glosten Milgrom model whose risky asset value admits an arbitrary discrete distribution. Contrast to existing results on insider's models, the insider's optimal strategy in this model, if exists, is not of feedback type. Therefore a weak formulation of equilibrium is...

We model major criminal activity as a game in which a law enforcement officer chooses the rate at which to screen different population groups and a criminal organization (e.g., drug cartel, terrorist cell) chooses the observable characteristics of its recruits. Our model best describes smuggling...