A risk-averse firm faces uncertainty about the spot price of the output, but has access to a futures market. The technology requires both capital and labor to produce the output. Due to the presence of flexibility in production, the level of capital and the volume of futures contracts are chosen...

We present results from a field experiment designed to measure the importance of managerial commitment to a contract within a firm that pays its workers piece rates. In the tree planting industry the piece rate paid to workers is determined as a function of the difficulty of the terrain to be...

We study the effect of heterogeneous growth in demand on resource extraction. Using the Great Fish War framework of Levhari and Mirman (1980), we show that heterogeneity in demand growth has a profound effect on both cooperative and non-cooperative solutions.

This paper tackles the prediction of the probability and severity of US recessions. We employ parsimonious Probit models to estimate the probability of a recession h periods ahead, for h varying between 1 and 8 quarters. A novel goodness-of-fit measure derived from the Kullback-Leibler...

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, to compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby to reduce asymmetric information. Permitting risk classification may reduce informational asymmetry-induced...

Assessing the progressivity of a fiscal system is relevant to develop a global idea on the extent of redistribution. In this paper we assess the evolution of progressivity over time and how economic shocks and government fiscal policy affects its design. The social performance of fiscal...

We assess whether global social welfare has improved in the last decades despite (or because of) the substantial increase in global population. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach called critical-level generalized utilitarianism...

We analyze firms’ entry, production and hedging decisions under imperfect competition. We consider an oligopoly industry producing a homogeneous output in which risk-averse firms face an entry cost upon entering the industry, and then compete in Cournot with one another. Each firm faces...

This paper discusses the choice of the number of participants for within-subjects (WS) designs and between-subjects (BS) designs based on simulations of statistical power allowing for different numbers of experimental periods. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach in the context of field...

I present a model of conformism in social networks that incorporates both peer effects and self-selection. I find that equilibrium behaviors are linked through the Laplacian matrix of the equilibrium network. I show that conformism has positive social value and that social welfare can be bounded...