Knowledge that Transforms

The timing of elections is flexible in many countries. We study this optimization by first creating a Bayesian learning model of a mean-reverting political support process. We then explore optimal electoral timing, modelling it as a renewable American option with interacting waiting and stopping values. Inter alia, we show that the expected longevity is a convex, then concave, function of the support. Finally, we calibrate our model to the post-1945 Labour-Tory U.K. rivalry. Our story quite well explains when the elections were called. We also show that election options approximately double the expected time in power in the current streak.

We examine racial preferences in dating. We employ a Speed Dating experiment that allows us to directly observe individual decisions and thus infer whose preferences lead to racial segregation in romantic relationships. Females exhibit stronger racial preferences than males. The richness of our data further allows us to identify many determinants of same-race preferences. Subjects' backgrounds, including the racial composition of the ZIP code where a subject grew up and the prevailing racial attitudes in a subject's state or country of origin, strongly influence same-race preferences. Older subjects and more physically attractive subjects exhibit weaker same-race preferences.

We study the comovement among stock prices and exchange rates in a three-good, three-country, Centre-Periphery, dynamic equilibrium model in which the Centre's agents face portfolio constraints. We characterize equilibrium in closed form for a broad class of portfolio constraints, solving for stock prices, terms of trade, and portfolio holdings. We show that portfolio constraints generate wealth transfers between the Periphery countries and the Centre, which increase the comovement of the stock prices across the Periphery. We associate this excess comovement caused by portfolio constraints with the phenomenon known as contagion. The model generates predictions consistent with other important empirical results such as amplification and flight-to-quality effects.

We develop a framework for modelling choice in the presence of framing effects. An extended choice function assigns a chosen element to every pair (A, f) where A is a set of alternatives, and f is a frame. A frame includes observable information that is irrelevant in the rational assessment of the alternatives, but nonetheless affects choice. We relate the new framework to the classical model of choice correspondence. Conditions are identified under which there exists either a transitive or a transitive and complete binary relation R such that an alternative x is chosen in some (A, f) iff x is R-maximal in the set A. We then demonstrate that the framework of choice correspondence misses information, which is essential to economic modelling, and which is incorporated in the extended choice function.

This paper studies the welfare properties of competitive equilibria in an economy with financial frictions hit by aggregate shocks. In particular, it shows that competitive financial contracts can result in excessive borrowing ex ante and excessive volatility ex post. Even though from a first-best perspective the equilibrium always displays under-borrowing, from a second-best point of view excessive borrowing can arise. The inefficiency is due to the combination of limited commitment in financial contracts and the fact that asset prices are determined in a spot market. This generates a pecuniary externality that is not internalized in private contracts. The model provides a framework to evaluate preventive policies, which can be used during a credit boom to reduce the expected costs of a financial crisis.

We develop an assignment theory to analyse the volume and composition of foreign direct investment (FDI). Firms conduct FDI by either engaging in greenfield investment or in cross-border acquisitions. Cross-border acquisitions involve firms trading heterogeneous corporate assets to exploit complementarities, while greenfield FDI involves setting up a new production division in the foreign country. In equilibrium, greenfield FDI and cross-border acquisitions coexist within the same industry, but the composition of FDI between these modes varies with firm and country characteristics. Firms engaging in greenfield investment are systematically more efficient than those engaging in cross-border acquisitions. Furthermore, most FDI takes the form of cross-border acquisitions when production-cost differences between countries are small, while greenfield investment plays a more important role for FDI from high-cost into low-cost countries. These results capture important features of the data.

Are politicians motivated by policy outcomes or by the perks of office? The answer to this question is central to understanding the behavior of office holders and the policies they produce. Despite the question’s importance, however, the existing literature is not well suited to provide an answer. To shed light on the issue of political motivations I exploit a basic fact: to hold office, one must first win election. By characterizing the types of candidates that succeed in elections, I am able to predict the types that hold office and the policies that are produced. Toward this end, I develop a simple model of two candidate electoral competition in which candidates may be either office or policy motivated. In a second departure from standard formulations, the model incorporates both campaign and post-election behavior of candidates. In this environment I find that office motivated candidates are favored in electoral competition, but that their advantage is limited by the electoral mechanism itself, and policy motivated candidates win a significant fraction of elections. More importantly, I show that the competitive interaction among candidates of different motivations affects the incentives of all candidates — both office and policy motivated — and that this competition affects policy outcomes.

Observed asset prices are known to deviate from their efficient values due to market microstructure frictions. This paper studies the effects of market microstructure noise on nonparametric estimates of the efficient price integrated variance. Specifically, we consider both asymptotic and finite sample effects of general market microstructure noise on realized variance estimates. The finite sample results culminate in a variance/bias trade-off that serves as a basis for an optimal sampling theory. Our theory also considers the effects of pre-filtering the data and proposes a novel bias-correction. We show that this theory is easily implementable in practise requiring only the calculation of sample moments of the observable high-frequency return data.

Characteristics models have been found to be useful in many areas of economics. However, their empirical implementation tends to rely heavily on functional form assumptions. In this paper we develop a revealed preference approach to characteristics models. We derive the necessary and sufficient empirical conditions under which data on the market behaviour of heterogeneous, price-taking consumers are non-parametrically consistent with the consumer characteristics model. Where these conditions hold, we show how information may be recovered on individual consumers' marginal valuations of product attributes. In some cases, marginal valuations are point identified, and in other cases, we can only recover bounds. Where the conditions fail, we highlight the role which the introduction of unobserved product attributes can play in rationalizing the data. We implement these ideas using consumer panel data on the Danish milk market.

This paper considers an optimal taxation environment where household income is private information, and the government randomly audits and punishes households found to be underreporting. We prove that the optimal mechanism derived using standard mechanism design techniques has a bad equilibrium (a tax riot) where households underreport their incomes, precisely because other households are expected to do so as well. We then consider three alternative approaches to designing a tax scheme when one is worried about bad equilibria.