The unique capital structure of commercial banking - funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economy's payments system - affects various aspects of banking. It shapes commercial banks' comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally...

This paper explores how to incorporate banks' capital structure and risk-taking into models of production. In doing so, the paper bridges the gulf between (1) the banking literature that studies moral hazard effects of bank regulation without considering the underlying microeconomics of...

This paper presents a somewhat new econometric framework that permits simultaneous estimation of price-cost margins, scale economies and productivity from a panel of establishment data. The econometric model contains only a few, economically interesting parameters to be estimated, but it is...

This paper investigates the relation between agglomeration of economic activity and the pattern of specialization of countries. We develop a model encompassing a Ricardian comparative advantage, increasing returns to scale, product differentiation, monopolistic competition, trade costs, and...

The unique capital structure of commercial banking - funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economyś payments system - affects various aspects of banking. It shapes banks ́comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally opaque...

The structure of a family may have important consequences for the material well-being of its members. For example, in large families, an individual must share resources with many others, but she may benefit from economies of scale in consumption. In this paper, we study individual consumption in...