Most of the British electricity supply industry has been privatized. Two dominant generators supply bulk electricity to an unregulated "pool." They submit a supply schedule of prices for generation and receive the market-clearing price, which varies with demand. Despite claims that this should be highly competitive, the authors show that the Nash equilibrium in supply schedules implies a high markup on marginal cost and substantial deadweight losses. Further simulations, to show the effect of entry by 1994, produce somewhat lower prices at the cost of excessive entry; subdividing the generators into five firms would produce better results.

Insider trading moves forward the resolution of uncertainty. Using a rational expectations model with endogenous investment level, the author shows that, when insider trading is permitted, (1) stock prices better reflect information and will be higher on average, (2) expected real investment will rise, (3) markets are less liquid, (4) owners of investment projects and insiders will benefit, and (5) outside investors and liquidity traders will hurt. Total welfare may increase or decrease depending on the economic environment. Factors that favor the prohibition of insider trading are identified.

The authors argue that many goods and decisions are not allocated or made through markets. They interpret an agent's status as a ranking device that determines how well he or she fares in the nonmarket sector. The existence of a nonmarket sector can endogenously generate a concern for relative position in, for example, the income distribution so that higher income implies higher status. Moreover, it can naturally yield multiple equilibria. It is thus possible to explain differences in growth rates across countries without recourse to differences in underlying preferences, technologies, or endowments. Different social organizations lead to different reduced-form preferences, which lead to different growth rates.

The authors analyze a differential game in which all interest groups have access to a common capital stock. They show that the introduction of a technology that has inferior productivity but enjoys private access may ameliorate the tragedy of the commons. The authors use this model to analyze capital flight: in many poor countries, property rights are not well defined; since "safe" bank accounts in rich countries (the inferior technology) are available to citizens of these countries, they engage in capital flight. They show that the occurrence of capital flight does not imply that opening the capital account reduces growth and welfare.

We study environments in which agents may borrow sequentially from more than one lender. Although debt is prioritized, additional lending imposes an externality on prior debt because, with moral hazard, the probability of repayment of prior loans decreases. Equilibrium interest rates are higher than they would be if borrowers could commit to borrow from at most one bank. Even though the loan terms are less favorable than they would be under commitment, the indebtedness of borrowers is greater. Further, additional lending causes the probability of default to increase. The results apply to markets for consumer, corporate, and international debt.