Whether or not banks are engaged in ex ante monitoring of customers may have important consequences for the whole economy.We approach this question via a model in which banks can invest in either information acquisition or market power (product differentiation). The two alternatives generate...

We use elections data in which a large number of ties in vote counts between candidates are resolved via a lottery to study the personal incumbency advantage. We benchmark non-experimental regression discontinuity design (RDD) estimates against the estimate produced by this experiment that takes...

In this paper we study a horizontally differentiated market for financial in-termediation and develop a simple explanation for concentration in the financial intermediation industry. We show that under asymmetric information, if the demand for funds is not perfectly elastic, the heterogeneity of...

Mobile phones are increasingly used as a gateway to the Internet. The take-up of mobile phone-enabled Internet services was, however, initially slower than expected, at least in Europe. We estimate non-parametrically the price elasticities of demand for first-generation wireless services using...

This paper provides evidence that capital market imperfections hold back innovation and growth, and that public policy can complement capital markets. We deliver the evidence by studying the effects of government funding on the behavior of SMEs in Finland. By adapting the methodology recently...

We study empirically the determinants of deposit supply using bank level data from local Finnish cooperative banks. Of special interest is the effect of bank branch density on deposit supply. Our main finding is that holding other things constant, the denser the branch network, the lower the...

In a model of bank lending characterized by asymmetric information, we show that banks may misuse the availability of an interim monitoring technology to soften price competition, even though the borrowers face no moral hazard problem. The interim monitoring technology can also be used to...

Why is invention strongly positively correlated with parental income not only in the US but also in Finland which displays low income inequality and high social mobility? Using data on 1.45M Finnish individuals and their parents, we find that: (i) the positive association between parental income...

This paper concerns the attractiveness for member ship in Swedish golf clubs. A representative voter model is derived and the attractiveness for member ship in golf clubs estimated using a unique data set on qualities of the golf course, the quality of neighboring courses and characteristics...

Many quality dimensions are hard to contract upon and are at risk of degradation when services are procured rather than produced in-house. However, procurement may foster performance-improving innovation. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009,...