Asset prices have played a prominent role in the present business cycle, both in terms of the amplitude of their fluctuations and because of their impact on financial institutions and economic activity. Such medium-term swings are of course not new; the last similar episode took place in the early 1970s. What has drawn attention to the recent asset price movements is not only their absolute siz...

This paper estimates a dynamic model of the world oil market and tests whether OPEC countries colluded and whether non-OPEC countries behaved oligopolistically over the period 1970-2004. The model generates estimates of the shadow price of the resource with minimal functional form assumptions. Results support oligopolistic behavior among non-OPEC producers and collusion among OPEC producers exc...

We study a large market with directed search and signaling. Each seller chooses an investment that determines the quality of the good which is the seller’s private information. A seller also chooses the price of the good and the number of selling sites. After observing sellers’ choices of prices and sites, but not quality, buyers choose which site to visit. The sites posting the same price and ...

We show that variation in prices for new cars are in part the result of scarcity rents. Consistent with theoretical predictions, a dealership moving from a situation of shortage to one of ample inventory lowers transaction prices by about 1% ceteris paribus, or $230 on the average car. Shorter resupply times also decrease transaction prices for cars in excess demand. Transaction prices for cars...

Biodiesel production sustainability relates to decision making on blending involving economic and environmental criteria. Several feedstocks candidate in European countries biodiesel industry, namely different vegetable origin oils. The present research aims at assessing the impact of technological constraints allocated to the decision objectives taking into account ...

BACKGROUND This study is an empirical assessment of the impact of the drug decriminalization policy followed by Portugal in July 2001, on the price of illicit drugs. METHODS The analysis is performed using a difference-in-differences approach and the Synthetic Control Method in order to construct a synthetic control unit from a convex combination of countries. RESULTS The results suggest th...

Large house price bubbles can be devastating for the real economy. Therefore, understanding the conditions under which large house price bubbles occur is fundamental. We shed new light on this issue in a laboratory setting. We find that endowing subjects with a lower preference for housing services creates larger experimental house price bubbles. This is in line with the theoretical model mecha...

We analyze an exchange economy in which (i) all commodities except money are indivisible, (ii) agents' preferences can be described by a reservation value for each bundle of indivisible objects, and (iii) all agents are price-takers. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition under which market clearing prices exist. Implications for market mechanisms are discussed. Journal of Economic Lite...

Owners of stochastic assets can pool their endowments to smoothen and insure individual payoffs across outcomes and time. We explore, in such a setting, how contingent shadow prices on aggregate resources can be used for three purposes: First, to design mutual contracts for risk averse agents; second, to quantify the malfunctioning of such contracts when there are risk lovers (or scale economie...

rice production in most of asian countries has been increased more rapidly than population and this has been led to increase in supply and proportionately decrease in the real price of rice in world and domestic markets. furthermore, together with growth in production and national gross income of the country per-capita income has been increased and also demand for rice at national and internati...