I revisit the Diamond-Dybvig model of liquidity insurance in the presence of hidden trades. The key result is that in this environment deposit-taking banks are not necessary for the efficient provision of liquidity. Mutual funds are constrained efficient when supplemented with the same...

I analyze welfare properties of mutual funds in the Diamond-Dybvig model with two sources of aggregate risk: undiversifiable interest rate risk and shocks to aggregate liquidity demand. Mutual funds are inefficient when the economy faces undiversifiable interest rate risk. However, if only...

We develop a general framework for measuring biases in expectation formation. The method is based on the insight that biases can be inferred from the response of forecast errors to past news. Empirically, biases are measured by flexibly estimating the impulse response function of forecast...

This paper studies how the informational content of dividends is affected by leverage. While higher dividends convey good news at low levels of leverage, dividends become a bad signal when leverage is high. Quantitatively, a dividend increase is predicted to have a positive stock price reaction...

We develop a new method for estimating the effective reproduction number of an infectious disease (R) and apply it to track the dynamics of COVID-19. The method is based on the fact that in the SIR model, R is linearly related to the growth rate of the number of infected individuals. This...

Expectations affect economic decisions, and therefore inaccurate expectations are costly. Expectations can be wrong in ways that are systematic (bias) or unsystematic (noise). We provide a general method for quantifying the noise component. The method is based on the insight that theoretical...

This paper studies liquidity insurance by financial intermediaries when agents can make unobservable side trades. Closed-end mutual funds of Jacklin (1987) achieve constrained efficiency when regulated appropriately, equilibrium is unique, and there are no financial panics. In an economy with...

This paper experimentally studies the role of a compromise option in a repeated battle-of-the-sexes game. We find that in a random-matching environment, compromise serves as an effective focal point and facilitates coordination, but fails to improve efficiency. However, in a fixed-partnership...

Polluted rivers are harmful to human, animals and plants living along it. To reduce the harm, cleaning costs are generated. However, when the river passes through several different countries or regions, a relevant question is how should the costs be shared among the agents. Ni and Wang (2007)...

We theoretically and experimentally explore the impact of minority identity in two contrasting environments: one that encourages competition (all-pay auction contest) and one that encourages coordination (minimum-effort game). There are two types of decision makers and two corresponding types of...