Knowledge that Transforms

This paper considers nonstandard hypothesis testing problems that involve a nuisance parameter. We establish an upper bound on the weighted average power of all valid tests, and develop a numerical algorithm that determines a feasible test with power close to the bound. The approach is illustrated in six applications: inference about a linear regression coefficient when the sign of a control coefficient is known; small sample inference about the difference in means from two independent Gaussian samples from populations with potentially different variances; inference about the break date in structural break models with moderate break magnitude; predictability tests when the regressor is highly persistent; inference about an interval identified parameter; and inference about a linear regression coefficient when the necessity of a control is in doubt.

This paper develops a generalized Roy model with human capital accumulation, moral hazard, and career concerns. We identify and estimate the model with a large panel that matches data on publicly listed firms to information on their executives. The structural estimates obtained are used to decompose the firm‐size pay gap. We find that although total compensation and incentive pay increase with firm size, certainty‐equivalent pay decreases with firm size. In larger firms, and for more highly ranked executives, weaker signal quality about effort results in higher risk premiums. This risk premium accounts for roughly 80 percent of the firm‐size gap in total compensation. Larger firms are also willing to pay more than smaller ones to attract executives. Finally, the estimated coefficients on human capital accumulation from formal education and experience gained from different firms are individually significant, but their collective effect on firm‐size pay differentials nets out.

Both aristocratic privileges and constitutional constraints in traditional monarchies can be derived from a ruler's incentive to minimize expected costs of moral-hazard rents for high officials. We consider a dynamic moral-hazard model of governors serving a sovereign prince, who must deter them from rebellion and hidden corruption which could cause costly crises. To minimize costs, a governor's rewards for good performance should be deferred up to the maximal credit that the prince can be trusted to pay. In the long run, we find that high officials can become an entrenched aristocracy with low turnover and large claims on the ruler. Dismissals for bad performance should be randomized to avoid inciting rebellions, but the prince can profit from reselling vacant offices, and so his decisions to dismiss high officials require institutionalized monitoring. A soft budget constraint that forgives losses for low-credit governors can become efficient when costs of corruption are low. [Former title: "Leadership, trust, and power: dynamic moral hazard in high office."

For an arbitrary data set D = {(p, x)} ⊆ (ℝ+m∖ {0}) × ℝ+m, finite or infinite, it is shown that the following three conditions are equivalent: (a) D satisfies GARP; (b) D can be rationalized by a utility function; (c) D can be rationalized by a utility function that is quasiconcave, nondecreasing, and that strictly increases when all its coordinates strictly increase. Examples of infinite data sets satisfying GARP are provided for which every utility rationalization fails to be lower semicontinuous, upper semicontinuous, or concave. Thus condition (c) cannot be substantively improved upon.

Our paper provides a complete characterization of leverage and default in binomial economies with financial assets serving as collateral.First, our Binomial No-Default Theorem states that any equilibrium is equivalent (in real allocations and prices) to another equilibrium in which there is no default.Thus actual default is irrelevant, though the potential for default drives the equilibrium and limits borrowing.This result is valid with arbitrary preferences and endowments, arbitrary promises, many assets and consumption goods, production, and multiple periods.We also show that the no-default equilibrium would be selected if there were the slightest cost of using collateral or handling default.Second, our Binomial Leverage Theorem shows that equilibrium LT V for non-contingent debt contracts is the ratio of the worst-case return of the asset to the riskless rate of interest.Finally, our Binomial Leverage-Volatility theorem provides a precise link between leverage and volatility.

Strategic choice data from a carefully chosen set of ring‐network games are used to obtain individual‐level estimates of higher‐order rationality. The experimental design exploits a natural exclusion restriction that is considerably weaker than the assumptions underlying alternative designs in the literature. In our data set, 93 percent of subjects are rational, 71 percent are rational and believe others are rational, 44 percent are rational and hold second‐order beliefs that others are rational, and 22 percent are rational and hold at least third‐order beliefs that others are rational.

We consider empirical measurement of equivalent/compensating variation resulting from price-change of a discrete good using individual-level data, when there is unobserved heterogeneity in preferences.We show that for binary and unordered multinomial choice, the marginal distributions of EV/CV can be expressed as simple closed-form functionals of conditional choice-probabilities under essentially unrestricted preference-distributions.These results hold even when the distribution/dimension of unobserved heterogeneity are neither known nor identi-…ed and utilities are neither quasi-linear nor parametrically speci…ed.The welfare distributions take simple forms which are easy to compute in applications.In particular, average EV for a price-rise equals the change in average Marshallian consumer-surplus and is smaller than average CV for a normal good.These nonparametric point-identi…cation results fail for ordered choice if the unit-price is identical for all alternatives, thereby providing a connection to Hausman-Newey's (2014) partial identi…cation results for the limiting case of continuous choice.

We develop a model of the market for federal funds that explicitly accounts for its two distinctive features: banks have to search for a suitable counterparty, and once they meet, both parties negotiate the size of the loan and the repayment. The theory is used to answer a number of positive and normative questions: What are the determinants of the fed funds rate? How does the market reallocate funds? Is the market able to achieve an efficient reallocation of funds? We also use the model for theoretical and quantitative analyses of policy issues facing modern central banks.

Harsanyi (1974) criticized the von Neumann–Morgenstern (vNM) stable set for its presumption that coalitions are myopic about their prospects. He proposed a new dominance relation incorporating farsightedness, but retained another feature of the stable set: that a coalition S can impose any imputation as long as its restriction to S is feasible for it. This implicitly gives an objecting coalition complete power to arrange the payoffs of players elsewhere, which is clearly unsatisfactory. While this assumption is largely innocuous for myopic dominance, it is of crucial significance for its farsighted counterpart. Our modification of the Harsanyi set respects “coalitional sovereignty.” The resulting farsighted stable set is very different from both the Harsanyi and the vNM sets. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a farsighted stable set containing just a single-payoff allocation. This condition roughly establishes an equivalence between core allocations and the union of allocations over all single-payoff farsighted stable sets. We then conduct a comprehensive analysis of the existence and structure of farsighted stable sets in simple games. This last exercise throws light on both single-payoff and multi-payoff stable sets, and suggests that they do not coexist.

In this paper, I construct players' prior beliefs and show that these prior beliefs lead the players to learn to play an approximate Nash equilibrium uniformly in any infinitely repeated slightly perturbed game with discounting and perfect monitoring. That is, given any ε > 0, there exists a (single) profile of players' prior beliefs that leads play to almost surely converge to an ε-Nash equilibrium uniformly for any (finite normal form) stage game with slight payoff perturbation and any discount factor less than 1.