This paper examines postwar U.S. term structure data and finds that for almost any combination of maturities between one month and ten years, a high yield spread between a longer-term and a shorter-term interest rate forecasts rising shorter-term interest rates over the long term, but a declining yield on the longer-term bond over the short term. This pattern is inconsistent with the expectations theory of the term structure, but is consistent, with a model in which the spread is proportional to the value implied by the expectations theory.

Standard axiomatizations of expected-utility theory envision an agent with fixed probability assessments who can be observed to choose actions from varying opportunity sets (for instance, pairs of lotteries). These axiomatizations also envision that the agent's preferences among these actions depend on the state of nature only through clearly defined and observable consequences. This viewpoint may be unnecessarily restrictive as a basis for applying and evaluating the theory. We study instead the pattern of choices from a fixed set of actions as probability assessments change. Convexity and integrability conditions characterize maximization of expected state-dependent utility.

International differences in the cost of production of a key intermediate product can mean that a domestic firm is dependent on supplies from a foreign vertically integrated firm. This paper considers the incentives for the foreign firm and foreign country to supply the domestic firm when the firms compete in a Cournot or Bertrand market for the final product. The vertical supply decision is significantly affected by domestic supply conditions for the input and a domestic tariff on final product imports. Optimal policy by the exporting country may require a tax on both exports, or a subsidy on both exports.

The paper compares implications of three kinds of models of households' consumption behaviour: the basic permanent-income model, several models of liquidity-constrained households, and a model of an informationally-constrained efficient contract. These models are distinguished in terms of implications regarding the present discounted values of net trades to households at various levels of temporary income, and the households' marginal rates of substitution. Martingale consumption is studied as an approximation to the predicted consumption process of the efficient-contract model.

Charles Bean, Mathias Dewatripont, John Moore; Special Issue: The Econometrics of Financial Markets, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 58, Issue 3, 1