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Working Paper
Financial Contracting with Enforcement Externalities
We study the negative feedback loop between the aggregate default rate and the efficacy of enforcement in a model of debt-financed entrepreneurial activity. The novel feature of our model is that enforcement capacity is accumulated ex ante and thus subject to depletion ex post. We characterize the effect of shocks that deplete enforcement resources on the aggregate default rate and credit supply. In the model default decisions by entrepreneurs are strategic complements, leading to multiple equilibria. We propose a global game selection to overcome equilibrium indeterminacy and show how shocks ...
Report
Gender discrimination and social identity: experimental evidence from urban Pakistan
Gender discrimination in South Asia is a well-documented fact. However, gender is only one of an individual?s many identities. This paper investigates how gender discrimination depends on the social identities of interacting parties. We use an experimental approach to identify gender discrimination by randomly matching 2,836 male and female students pursuing bachelor?s-equivalent degrees in three different types of institutions?Madrassas (religious seminaries), Islamic universities, and liberal universities?that represent distinct identities within the Pakistani society. Our main finding is ...
Report
Anxiety and pro-cyclical risk taking with Bayesian agents
We provide a model that can explain empirically relevant variations in confidence and risk taking by combining horizon-dependent risk aversion (?anxiety?) and selective memory in a Bayesian intrapersonal game. In the time series, overconfidence is more prevalent when actual risk levels are high, while underconfidence occurs when risks are low. In the cross section, more anxious agents are more prone to biased confidence and their beliefs fluctuate more. This systematic variation in confidence levels can lead to objectively excessive risk taking by ?insiders? with the potential to amplify ...
Working Paper
Voluntary participation in a terror group and counterterrorism policy
A three-stage game investigates how counterterrorism measures are affected by volunteers’ choice in joining a terrorist group. In stage 1, the government chooses both proactive and defensive countermeasures, while looking ahead to the anticipated size and actions of terrorist groups. After radicalized individuals choose whether to join a terrorist group in stage 2, group members then allocate their time between work and terrorist operations. Based on wages and government counterterrorism, the game characterizes the extensive margin determining group size and the intensive margin ...
Journal Article
The Trade-Offs of Counterterrorism Policies
This article provides a modern overview of counterterrorism tools and their trade-offs for curbing terrorist attacks and their consequences. Defensive and proactive countermeasures constitute two main classes of counterterror tools deployed by targeted governments. The primary drawback of defensive actions, which make terrorist attacks more costly and less apt to succeed, is attack transference that shifts the mode, venue, or target of attacks to those less protected. In contrast, offensive proactive measures, which confront the terrorists directly, may result in backlash as terrorist ...
Working Paper
(A)symmetric Information Bubbles: Experimental Evidence
Asymmetric information has been necessary to explain a bubble in past theoretical models. This study experimentally analyzes traders? choices, with and without asymmetric information, based on the riding-bubble model. We show that traders have an incentive to hold a bubble asset for longer, thereby expanding the bubble in a market with symmetric, rather than asymmetric information. However, when traders are more experienced, the size of the bubble decreases, in which case bubbles do not arise, with symmetric information. In contrast, the size of the bubble is stable in a market with ...
Working Paper
Collaboration in Bipartite Networks, with an Application to Coauthorship Networks
This paper studies the impact of collaboration on research output. First, we build a micro founded model for scientific knowledge production, where collaboration between researchers is represented by a bipartite network. The equilibrium of the game incorporates both the complementarity effect between collaborating researchers and the substitutability effect between concurrent projects of the same researcher. Next, we develop a Bayesian MCMC procedure to estimate the structural parameters, taking into account the endogenous matching of researchers and projects. Finally, we illustrate the ...
Working Paper
Collateral Runs
This paper models an unexplored source of liquidity risk faced by large broker-dealers: collateral runs. By setting different contracting terms on repurchase agreements with cash borrowers and lenders, dealers can source funds for their own activities. Cash borrowers internalize the risk of losing their collateral in case their dealer defaults, prompting them to withdraw it. This incentive creates strategic complementarities for counterparties to withdraw their collateral, reducing a dealer's liquidity position and compromising her solvency. Collateral runs are markedly different than ...
Working Paper
Interjurisdictional Competition and Location Decisions of Firms
We examine the welfare properties of alternative regimes of interjurisdictional competition for heterogenous mobile firms. Firms differ not only in terms of the degree of mobility across jurisdictions but also in terms of productivity. Alternative taxation regimes represent restraints on the discretionary powers of taxation of local governments. We find that average welfare is higher under discretionary and more efficient taxation regimes (in the sense of minimizing deadweight losses from distortionary taxation) when firms are highly mobile. In this situation, further limiting competition by ...
Working Paper
Superstar Economists: Coauthorship networks and research output
We study the impact of research collaborations in coauthorship networks on research output and how optimal funding can maximize it. Through the links in the collaboration network, researchers create spillovers not only to their direct coauthors but also to researchers indirectly linked to them. We characterize the equilibrium when agents collaborate in multiple and possibly overlapping projects. We bring our model to the data by analyzing the coauthorship network of economists registered in the RePEc Author Service. We rank the authors and research institutions according to their contribution ...