We consider contracts to purchase assets by means of streams of payments over time, with the asset as security. These give the purchaser an option not present if all payment is made up front, the option of stopping payments and delivering the asset in satisfaction of the remaining debt. We argue...

Uncertainty is part and parcel of the human condition. The need to manage climate risk has shaped human institutions for many centuries, giving rise to insurance in agricultural societies and to patterns of land holdings across medieval Europe} Today's concern about global climate change breaks...

In this paper we study the introduction of new assets which are oftenly observed to be defined in expected values rather than state by state, called the Arrow-Lind-Malinvaud (ALM) assets. We demonstrate that individual default emerges naturally in an economy where such ALM assets are introduced...