Imposing liability on a company for sexual harassment by supervisors cannot be justified as promoting equality between the sexes, protection of workers, or protection of the owners of the company. Such liability might be justified to prevent breach of contract or behavior offensive to the...

There is a secret paradox at the heart of social contract theories. Such theories assume that, because personal security and private property are at risk in a state of nature, subjects will agree to grant Leviathan a monopoly of violence. But what is to prevent Leviathan from turning on his...

The tax office wins most cases in Japan. We think about why this might be. We find that although judges who rule in favor of the taxpayer do not suffer in their future careers, if the loser-- whether governemnt or taxpayer--appeals and wins, the reversed judge's career does take a turn for the...

Conviction rates in Japan exceed 99 percent -- why? On the one hand, because Japanese prosecutors are badly understaffed they may prosecute only their strongest cases and present judges only with the most obviously guilty defendants. On the other, because Japanese judges can be reassigned by the...

Two central puzzles about social norms are how they are enforced and how they are created or modified. The sanctions for violation of a norm can be categorized as automatic, guilt, shame, informational, bilateral- costly, and multilateral-costly. Problems in creating and enforcing norms are...

We consider the learning curve in an industry with free entry and exit, and price-taking firms. A unique equilibrium exists if the fixed cost is positive. While equilibrium profits are zero, mature firms earn rents on their learning, and, if costs are convex, no firm can profitably enter after...

Este documento de trabajo analiza el Modelo de Valoración de Opciones basado en la Estructura de Tasas de Interés de Salomon Brothers. Con ello se calcula la duración efectiva de bonos prepagables.

La presente investigación intenta replicar el trabajo de Fama y French (1992) para el mercado chileno, dentro de cierto marco de limitaciones generales. Específicamente, el objetivo de la investigación es evaluar el rol conjunto del beta de mercado, el tamaño, la razón utilidad a precio, el...

Bidders have to decide whether and when to incur the cost of estimating their own values in auctions. This can explain why people seem to get carried away, bidding higher than they had planned before the auction and then finding they had paid more than the object was worth to them. Even when...

Esta es la tercera parte de una serie que forman una investigación más amplia titulada “La Estrategia de Citicorp en Chile: Un Intento de Investigación”. Aquí se describe la naturaleza, reglamentación, estado actual y perspectivas de más de los 25 segmentos del mercado financiero...