There is astounding variation in product quality sold in markets even when quality is difficult to ascertain and rules are poorly enforced. We investigate whether sellers differ in innate honesty (incur private cost to provide good quality) and whether this explains the variation in quality. Our...

We evaluate a temporary public sector employment program targeted at individuals with weak labor market attachment, applying dynamic inverse probability weighting to account for dynamic selection. We show that the program is successful in increasing employment and reducing social assistance....

Short-time work - a wage subsidy conditional on hour reductions - has become an important tool of labor market policy in many European countries. As the scope of these policies expanded, concerns about side effects due to adverse selection increased. We develop a model of job retention policies...

I study the economic value of obesity - a seemingly inconsequential but unhealthy status symbol in poor countries. Randomizing decision-makers in Kampala, Uganda to view weight-manipulated portraits, I make four findings. First, obesity is perceived as a reliable signal of wealth rather than...

We provide a rationale for bank money creation in our current monetary system by investigating its merits over a system with banks as intermediaries of loanable funds. The latter system could result when CBDCs are introduced. In the loanable funds system, households limit banks' leverage ratios...

Asymmetric information can distort market outcomes. I study how the online disclosure of information affects consumers' behavior and firms' incentives to upgrade product quality in markets where information is traditionally limited. I first build a model of consumer search with firms' endogenous...

We assess the usefulness of stochastic redistribution among a continuum of risk-averse agents with quasilinear utilities in labor. Agents differ according to their consumption tastes, which remain private information. We identify circumstances where stochastic redistribution is socially...

This paper studies the optimal design of a pension system together with publicly-provided individualized financial education. Agents can invest in both a risky and a non risky asset and can either under- or over-estimate the expected return of the risky asset. We show that, under perfect...

The paper differs from current literature by providing a systematic analysis of the relationship between sovereign debt, financial distress and political career concerns via a novel game-theoretic model, in order to analyze the strategic behavior of governments in revealing financial distress...

In this paper, we study the asymmetric information between asset managers and investors in the socially responsible investment (SRI) market. Specifically, we investigate the lack of transparency of the extra-financial information communicated by asset managers. Using a unique international panel...

The paper presents a two-period Walrasian financial market model composed of informed and uninformed rational investors, and noise traders. The rational investors maximize second period consumption utility from the payoffs of trading risk-free holdings to risky assets in the first period. The...

Using highly detailed data on the loan portfolios of large U.S. banks, we document that these banks "specialize" by concentrating their lending disproportionately into one industry. This specialization improves a bank’s industry-specific knowledge and allows it to offer generous loan terms to...

Asymmetric information in procurement entails double marginalization. The phenomenon is most severe when the buyer has all the bargaining power at the production stage, while it vanishes when the buyer and suppliers' weights are balanced. Vertical integration eliminates double marginalization...

This study aims at examining the integration impact of the five ASEAN Islamic capital markets on asymmetric information for ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) development. Utilizing samples of market and financial panel data from 2009 to 2015 among the five ASEAN Islamic capital markets, and...

We explore Lithuanian credit register data and two bank closures to provide a novel estimate of firms' bank-switching costs and a novel identification of the hold-up problem. We show that when a distressed bank's closure forced firms to switch, these firms started borrowing at lower interest...

We propose a theory of optimal firm financing given nested information problems of adverse selection and agency cost. We prove that there exists a unique perfect Bayesian equilibrium with novel features: First, three types of optimal contracts arise endogenously, i.e., equity, transparent debt...

We document a new set of facts regarding the impact of referrals on labor market outcomes. Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between different types of referrals-those from family and friends and those from business contacts-and different occupations. Then we develop an...

In this paper we develop a simple two-period model that reconciles credit demand and supply frictions. In this stylized but realistic model credit and deposit markets are interlinked and credit demand and credit supply frictions amplify each other in such a way that produces in equilibrium very...

We study intermediaries who seek to maximize gains from trade in bilateral negotiations. Intermediaries are players: they cannot commit to act against their objective function and deny, in some cases, trade they believe to be beneficial. This impairs their ability to assist the parties relative...