The fluctuations in incomes inherent in rural communities can be attenuated by reciprocal insurance. We develop a model of such insurance based on self-interested behaviour and voluntary participation. One individual assists another only if the costs of so doing are outweighed by the benefits...

We present an overview of models of long-term self-enforcing labor contracts in which risk sharing is the dominant motive for contractual solutions. A base model is developed which is sufficiently general to encompass the two-agent problem central to most of the literature, including variable...

This paper studies the costs and benefits of the adoption of the policy of free movement for workers. For the countries to agree on uncontrolled movement of workers, the short run costs must be outweighed by the long term benefits that result from better labor market flexibility and income...

Lending across national boundaries is different from lending within national boundaries because of the difficulty of imposing legal sanctions. This note, examines a simple model of international lending where the borrower can repudiate, without legal sanction, if this is to his advantage. The...

A common practice of banks has been to pool assets of different qualities and then sell a fraction of the newly created portfolios to investors. We extend the signaling model for single sales of risky assets to portfolio sales. We identify conditions under which signaling at the portfolio level...

This paper presents a new model of firms' decisions on training in a context of potential worker mobility. Such worker mobility can be influenced by employers coordination, namely through the operation of no-poach agreements and employers' associations (EAs). We then present supporting evidence...

This paper studies firm-provided training in a context of potential worker mobility. We argue that such worker mobility may be reduced by employers' associations (EAs) through no-poach agreements. First, we sketch a simple model to illustrate the impact of employer coordination on training. We...

In this paper we conduct a theoretical analysis of the implications of a union which can exploit the existence of firm labour adjustment costs. We consider a model involving a large number of identical firms facing a single, economy-wide union. We solve (i) for the Markov perfect equilibria with...

Following insights by Bewley (1999a), this paper analyses a model with downward rigidities in which firms cannot pay discriminate based on a year of entry to a firm, and develops an equilibrium model of wages and unemployment. We solve for the dynamics of wages and unemployment under conditions...

This paper analyses a model in which firms cannot pay discriminate based on year of entry to a firm, and develops an equilibrium model of wage dynamics and unemployment. The model is developed under the assumption of worker mobility, so that workers can costlessly quit jobs at any time. Firms on...