It is well known that the rock-paper-scissors game has no pure saddle point. Weshow that this holds more generally: A symmetric two-player zero-sum game hasa pure saddle point if and only if it is not a generalized rock-paper-scissors game.Moreover, we show that every finite symmetric...

Recent events in several countries have underscored the importanceof good governance in private occupational pension plans. Thepresent paper uses contract theory to analyze the interplay of residualclaims and control rights in private pensions. The residual claimant isthe plan sponsor in a...

Monetary economics as practiced by central bank modelers has made a great deal of progress in recent years. In a 2002 paper I interviewed research economists at four central banks and surveyed the models in use at those banks. I criticized the models for having lost all touch with statistical...

Empirical evidence from the UK market is brought to bear on recent theories of closed-endfund discounts. Market pricing of skill, relative to the fees charged for it, accounts for asignificant portion of discount variation, but cannot explain the rarity of index funds orwhy they trade at a...

The authors analyze the optimal replacement of assets under continuous and discontinuoustechnological change. They investigate the variable lifetime of assets in an infinite-horizonreplacement problem. Due to deterioration, the maintenance cost increases when the assetbecomes older. Because of...

After liberalizing international transactions of financial assets, many countries experiencelarge swings in asset prices, capital flows, and aggregate production. This paper studies howthe adjustment to capital account liberalization depends upon the degree of development of adomestic financial...

Virtual Communities (VCs) offer ubiquitous access to information and exchange possibilities for people in similarcircumstances. This is especially valuable for patients with chronic / life-threatening diseases as they exhibit strongneeds for information and interaction.[...]

The focus of this paper is the evaluation of a very popular method for potential output estimation and medium-term forecasting the production function approachin terms of predictive performance. For this purpose, a forecast evaluation for the three to five years ahead predictions of GDP growth...

This paper analyzes the behaviour and motivation of fund managers in foreign exchange markets reflected in questionnaire evidence. We find that fund managers and FX dealers differ significantly. Fund managers rely more on fundamentals, basically due to their longer forecasting horizons, and...