How much credit can be given to entrepreneurship for the unprecedented innovation and growth of free-enterprise economies? In this book, some of the world's leading economists tackle this difficult and understudied question, and their responses shed new light on how free-market economies...

When information on longevity (survival functions) is unknown early in life, individuals have an interest in insuring themselves against moving into different 'risk-classes' as their life expectancy is revealed. The "First-Best" allocation involves transfers across states of nature. With...

An effective policy scheme to overcome the suboptimal low provision levels of global public goods is developed in this paper. By suggesting a decentralized approach to raise environmental public good provision levels we take account of the lack of a coercive global authority that is able to...

When information on longevity (survival functions) is unknown early in life, individuals have an interest to insure themselves against future ’risk-class’ classification. Accordingly, the First-Best typically involves transfers across states of nature. Competitive equilibrium cannot provide...

Annuities are financial products that guarantee the holder a fixed return so long as the holder remains alive, thereby providing insurance against lifetime uncertainty. The terms of these contracts depend on the information available to insurance firms. Unlike age and gender, information about...

What are the real effects of inflation? These collected articles constitute what is perhaps the definitive study of pricing models under inflation, providing a solid basis for further research on this elusive question. Covering a broad range of theory and applications by well-known...