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- All HBS Web (346)
- Faculty Publications (201)
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- All HBS Web (346)
- Faculty Publications (201)
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- Research Summary
Capital Controls, Risk and Liberalization Cycles (joint with Fabio Kanczuk)
By: Laura Alfaro
We construct an Overlapping-Generations model where agents vote on whether to open or close the economy to international capital flows. Political decisions are shaped by the risk over capital and labor returns. In an open economy, the capitalists (old) completely hedge... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
The NTU-Value of Stochastic Games
By: Elon Kohlberg and Abraham Neyman
Since the seminal paper of Shapley, the theory of stochastic games has been developed in many different directions. However, there has been practically no work on the interplay between stochastic games and cooperative game theory. Our purpose here is to make a first... View Details
Kohlberg, Elon, and Abraham Neyman. "The NTU-Value of Stochastic Games." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-014, September 2014.
- 2010
- Working Paper
A Behavioral Model of Demandable Deposits and Its Implications for Financial Regulation
By: Julio J. Rotemberg
A model is developed that rationalizes contracts that give depositors the right to obtain funds on demand even when depositors intend to use these funds for consumption in the future. This is explained by depositor overoptimism regarding their own ability to collect... View Details
Keywords: Banks and Banking; Insurance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Consumer Behavior; Financial Services Industry
Rotemberg, Julio J. "A Behavioral Model of Demandable Deposits and Its Implications for Financial Regulation." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 16620, December 2010.
- Article
Little Patents and Big Secrets: Managing Intellectual Property
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
Exploitation of an innovation commonly requires some disclosure of enabling knowledge (e.g., to obtain a patent or induce complementary investment). When property rights offer only limited protection, the value of the disclosure is offset by the increased threat of... View Details
Keywords: Patents; Management; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge; Rights; Value; Information; Corporate Disclosure
Anton, James J., and Dennis A. Yao. "Little Patents and Big Secrets: Managing Intellectual Property." RAND Journal of Economics 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1–22. (Harvard users click here for full text.)
- Research Summary
Prudence in Bargaining
We investigate the outcome of Rubinstein’s (1982) alternating-offer bargaining game when noise is added to a player’s pay-off. We find that a risk-averse player typically increases his equilibrium receipts when his pay-off is made risky. This is because... View Details
- Research Summary
Debt Maturity: Is Long-Term Debt Optimal? (with Fabio Kanczuk)
By: Laura Alfaro
We model and calibrate the arguments in favor and against short-term and long-term debt. These arguments broadly include: maturity-term premium, tax smoothing, rolling over risk and the cost from defaulting. We use a dynamic equilibrium model with tax distortion,... View Details
- December 2010
- Article
Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
The main arguments in favor of and against nominal and indexed debt are the incentive to default through inflation versus hedging against unforeseen shocks. We model and calibrate these arguments to assess their quantitative importance. We use a dynamic equilibrium... View Details
Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Motivation and Incentives; Inflation and Deflation; System Shocks; Taxation; Risk and Uncertainty; Framework; Problems and Challenges; Interest Rates; Cost; Developing Countries and Economies; Service Operations
Alfaro, Laura, and Fabio Kanczuk. "Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race." Journal of International Money and Finance 29, no. 8 (December 2010): 1706–1726. (Also Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 05-053 and NBER Working Paper No. 13131.)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
This paper studies the impact of the arbitrator selection process on consumer outcomes by examining roughly 9,000 consumer arbitration cases in the securities industry. Securities disputes present a good laboratory: arbitration is mandatory for all disputes,... View Details
Keywords: Arbitration; Financial Advisers; Financial Advisors; Brokers; Consumer Finance; Financial Misconduct; Fraud; Personal Finance; Conflict and Resolution; Information; Fairness
Egan, Mark, Gregor Matvos, and Amit Seru. "Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-046, October 2018. (Revise and Resubmit at the Review of Economic Studies. Revised May 2020. NBER Working Paper Series, No. 25150, October 2018)
- July 2007
- Article
A Two-Person Game of Information Transmission
By: Jerry R. Green and Nancy L. Stokey
We consider a statistical decision problem faced by a two player organization whose members may not
agree on outcome evaluations and prior probabilities. One player is specialized in gathering information
and transmitting it to the other, who takes the decision. This... View Details
Green, Jerry R., and Nancy L. Stokey. "A Two-Person Game of Information Transmission." Journal of Economic Theory 135, no. 1 (July 2007): 90–104.
- winter 2005
- Article
Financing Auction Bids
By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and S. Viswanathan
In many auctions, bidders do not have enough cash to pay their bid. If bidders have asymmetric cash positions and independent private values then auctions will be inefficient. However, what happens if bidders have access to financial markets? We characterize efficient... View Details
Keywords: Financing and Loans; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Financial Markets; Valuation; Cash; Capital Markets; Profit; Competition
Rhodes-Kropf, Matthew, and S. Viswanathan. "Financing Auction Bids." RAND Journal of Economics 36, no. 4 (winter 2005): 789–815.
- 2005
- Working Paper
Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
The main arguments in favor of and against nominal and indexed debt are the incentive to default through inflation versus hedging against unforeseen shocks. We model and calibrate these arguments to assess their quantitative importance. We use a dynamic equilibrium... View Details
Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Taxation; Risk and Uncertainty; Inflation and Deflation; System Shocks; Developing Countries and Economies; Mathematical Methods
Alfaro, Laura, and Fabio Kanczuk. "Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 05-053, January 2005. (Revised March 2010. Also NBER Working Paper No. 13131.)
- 2003
- Working Paper
Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat
This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Competition; Open Source Distribution; Balance and Stability; Applications and Software; Network Effects; Duopoly and Oligopoly
Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon, and Pankaj Ghemawat. "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 04-012, August 2003.
- 15 Jul 2010
- Working Paper Summaries
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
- 2025
- Working Paper
How Do Households Suppress the Price of Tail Risk?
By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Gordon Liao and Boris Vallée
This paper investigates the effects of the issuance of retail products with non-linear payoffs on option prices. For a given underlying asset, when the outstanding volume of products embedding a short-put position increases, implied volatility at the corresponding... View Details
Keywords: Security Design; Dividend; Options; Structured Products; Market Segmentation; Financial Instruments; Design; Volatility; Markets; Segmentation
Calvet, Laurent, Claire Célérier, Gordon Liao, and Boris Vallée. "How Do Households Suppress the Price of Tail Risk?" Working Paper, 2025.
- 2016
- Working Paper
Capital Requirements, Risk Choice, and Liquidity Provision in a Business Cycle Model
By: Juliane Begenau
This paper develops a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model in which households' preferences for safe and liquid assets constitute a violation of Modigliani and Miller. I show that the scarcity of these coveted assets created by increased bank capital... View Details
Keywords: Capital Requirement; Bank Regulation; Demand For Safe Assets; Business Cycles; Bank Lending; Risk Management; Financial Liquidity; Financing and Loans; Capital; Banks and Banking
Begenau, Juliane. "Capital Requirements, Risk Choice, and Liquidity Provision in a Business Cycle Model." Working Paper. (Revised September 2016.)
- May 1992
- Article
Coordination in Split-Award Auctions
By: James J. Anton and Dennis Yao
We analyze split award procurement auctions in which a buyer divides full production between two suppliers or awards all production to a single supplier, and suppliers have private cost information. An intriguing feature of split awards is that the equilibrium bids are... View Details
Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Balance and Stability; Cost; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Production; Five Forces Framework; Supply and Industry; Situation or Environment; Information; Manufacturing Industry
Anton, James J., and Dennis Yao. "Coordination in Split-Award Auctions." Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 2 (May 1992): 681–707. (Reprinted in P. Klemperer, ed., The Economic Theory of Auctions, Elgar, 2000.) Harvard users click here for full text.)
- Research Summary
The Chopstick Auction - An Experimental Study of the Exposure Problem in Auctions (with P. Guillen, L. Llorente, S. Onderstal, R. Sausgruber), 2002
Multi-unit auctions are sometimes plagued by the so-called exposure problem. In this paper, we analyze a simple game called the "chopstick auction" in which bidders are confronted with the exposure problem. We analyze the chopstick auction with incomplete information... View Details
- March 2010
- Article
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give the manager, as an equilibrium outcome, interpersonal authority over employees (in a world with open disagreement). The paper thus provides... View Details
Keywords: Theory; Assets; Ownership; Motivation and Incentives; Governance Controls; Power and Influence; Projects; Perspective; Employees
Van den Steen, Eric J. "Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm." American Economic Review 100, no. 1 (March 2010): 466–490.
- July 2002
- Article
The Sale of Ideas: Strategic Disclosure, Property Rights, and Contracting
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
Ideas are difficult to sell when buyers cannot assess an idea's value before it is revealed and sellers cannot protect a revealed idea. These problems exist in a variety of intellectual property sales ranging from pure ideas to poorly protected inventions and reflect... View Details
Anton, James J., and Dennis A. Yao. "The Sale of Ideas: Strategic Disclosure, Property Rights, and Contracting." Review of Economic Studies 69, no. 3 (July 2002): 513–531. (Harvard users click here for full text.)
- Summer 2025
- Article
Dynamic Competition for Customer Memberships
By: Cristian Chica, Julian Jimenez-Cardenas and Jorge Tamayo
A competitive two-period membership (subscription) market is analyzed. Two symmetric firms charge a “membership” fee that allows consumers to buy products or services at a given unit price for both periods. Firms can choose between long- or short-term memberships. When... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Price Discrimination; Membership; Dynamic Competition; Competition; Price; Consumer Behavior; Business Model
Chica, Cristian, Julian Jimenez-Cardenas, and Jorge Tamayo. "Dynamic Competition for Customer Memberships." Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 34, no. 2 (Summer 2025): 525–556.