ANARCHY, UNCERTAINTY, AND THE EMERGENCE OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

This paper investigates whether Lockean first claimer property rights should be expected to emerge in anarchy. Individuals behind a veil of uncertainty about their future wealth decide independently whether to commit to using fcrce. Neither the contractarian hypothesis that a thicker veil of uncertainty supports more co-operation nor Demsetz's hypothesis that well-defined property rights emerge as the value of the externality from not having private property increases is unambiguously implied by the model.     

International Debt, Insolvency and Illiquidity

Western governments and academics alike have neglected the dangers, long- and short-term, of the continuing and ill-considered issue of loans to countries - Poland, Mexico, etc. - whose rulers persisted with policies that have brought them to ruin. Professor Karl Brunner and five American collaborators analyse the genesis of such financial incontinence and indicate seven steps for the West to avoid international illiquidity.     

On Price Caps Under Uncertainty

This paper shows how standard arguments supporting the imposition of price caps break down in the presence of demand uncertainty. In particular, though in the deterministic case the introduction or lowering of a price cap (above marginal cost) results in increased production, increased total welfare, decreased prices, and increased consumer welfare, we show that all of the above comparative statics predictions fail for generic uncertain demand functions. For example, for price caps sufficiently close to marginal cost, a decrease in the price cap always leads to a decrease in production and total welfare under certain mild conditions. Under stronger regularity assumptions, all of the monotone comparative statics predictions from the deterministic case also do not hold for a generic uncertain demand if we restrict attention to price caps in an arbitrary fixed interval (as long as the price caps are binding for some values in that interval).     

HOUSEHOLD DEBT AND ATTITUDES TOWARD RISK

We explore the relationship between attitudes toward risk and the level of debt at the household level for a sample of households drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) over the period 1984 to 2007. Using a sequence of questions from the 1996 PSID, we analyze the implications of interpersonal differences in attitudes toward risk for the accumulation of unsecured debt, secured debt, and total debt at the household level. Our empirical findings suggest that attitudes toward risk are an important determinant of the level of debt acquired at the household level with risk aversion being inversely related to the level of debt accumulated by households.     

Ambiguous Information,Portfolio Inertia,and Excess Volatility

I study the effects of risk and ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) on optimal portfolios and equilibrium asset prices when investors receive information that is difficult to link to fundamentals. I show that the desire of investors to hedge ambiguity leads to portfolio inertia and excess volatility. Specifically, when news is surprising, investors may not react to price changes even if there are no transaction costs or other market frictions. Moreover, I show that small shocks to cash flow news, asset betas, or market risk premia may lead to drastic changes in the stock price and hence to excess volatility.