Due to wealth effects, the price of a security may vary with the realization of an underlying risk factor even when the security's dividend is independent of that factor. This paper highlights a crucial component of these effects hitherto ignored by the literature: changes in wealth do not alter...

Currently, financial economics is unable to predict changes in asset prices with respect to changes in the underlying risk factors, even when an asset's dividend is independent of a given factor. This paper takes steps towards addressing this issue by highlighting a crucial component of wealth...

This paper investigates the social preferences over labor market exibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand. We demonstrate that how the economy responds to productivity shocks depends on the power of labor to extract rents and on the status quo level of the firing cost....

This paper examines the structures behind competitive transformation in telecommunications. The analysis is based on qualitative evidence from Telefonica’s transformation since the mid-1980s and comparisons with BT, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom. Telecommunications is a critical industry...

We provide a general characterization of diffusion processes, allowing to analyze both risk-sharing and contagion at the same time. We show that interdependencies are beneficial when the economic environment is favorable, and detrimental when the economic environment deteriorates. The risk of...

We investigate how nondemocratic regimes use the military and how this can lead to the emergence of military dictatorships. Nondemocratic regimes need the use of force in order to remain in power, but this creates a political moral hazard problem; a strong military may not simply work as an...

Inefficiencies in the bureaucratic organization of the state are often viewed as important factors in retarding economic development. Why certain societies choose or end up with such inefficient organizations has received very little attention, however. In this paper, we present a simple theory...

This paper investigates the role that idiosyncratic uncertainty plays in shaping social preferences over the degree of labor market flexibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand where the productivity of firms evolves over time as a Geometric Brownian motion. A key result...

In a single-commodity, pure-exchange, representative-agent economy with many Lucas' trees whose dividends are geometric Brownian motions, I study the comparative statics of the prices of these assets with respect to the current Brownian realization. As is well-known, due to wealth effects, a...