For markets to work efficiently, buyers and sellers must be able to transact easily. People must have access to a marketplace such as a supermarket or a stock exchange with adequate liquidity. Further, people must have confidence that such a well-functioning marketplace will also exist in the...

Banking has grown too much in Europe - in three senses. First, the European banking system has reached a size where its contribution to real economic growth is likely to be nil or negative. Second, the European financial structure is biased towards banks (rather than securities markets), which...

We study an economy subject to recurrent disasters when agents have imprecise information about the frequency and duration of the disasters. Uncertainty about the persistence of states can lead to seemingly pessimistic behavior in bad times and optimistic behavior in good times. In a disaster,...

Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash flow risk by trading in financial markets, but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain...

Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash flow risk by trading in financial markets, but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain...

We study an economy subject to recurrent disasters when agents have imprecise information about the frequency and duration of the disasters. Uncertainty about the persistence of states can lead to seemingly pessimistic behavior in bad times and optimistic behavior in good times. In a disaster,...