Papers & Opinions


Paper


Posted on 5 October 2023

We formalize Zingales' (2017) argument about the link between corporate economic characteristics and political influence in a setup that exhibits an inverse relationship between citizens' participation in production and the...

Paper


Posted on 4 August 2022

We characterize conditions under which the majority of voters supports a bailout despite incurring bailout expenditures. This yields inefficiently high investments when economic prospects are good. When economic prospects are...

Paper


Posted on 17 June 2022

We propose a novel pressure-based model of financial misconduct. We interpret the robust empirical findings of a high “success rate of crime” as evidence of skewness in the payoff of...

Paper


Posted on 14 June 2022

We study a standard real-option problem in which sequential decisions are made through voting by a group of members with heterogeneous beliefs. We show that, when facing both investment and...

Paper


Posted on 10 June 2022

A collective and an individual investment in financial literacy, plus intrinsic skills, contribute to each household's financial literacy. We show that low- and high-skilled households oppose the collective investment, contrary...

Paper


Posted on 22 November 2021

We examine why rational voters support risky “policy gambles”, even when detrimental to welfare, over maintaining a safe status quo. We present a model of electoral competition with two groups...

Paper


Posted on 8 November 2021

In a general equilibrium framework, we study the cost incurred by banks to ''buy" influence on capital regulation via campaign contributions. Our central result is that banks buy influence at...

Paper


Posted on 22 October 2021

We study firm governance when shareholders strategically vote and buy/sell shares. We find that voting for the better policy maximizes portfolio value only when pivotal; otherwise, it is better to...

Paper


Posted on 21 September 2021

Risk premia are significantly elevated during periods of democratization in a cross-country panel of equity data covering 85 countries over 200 years, despite little evidence of a negative effect on...

Paper


Posted on 20 September 2021

This paper studies voting in shareholders meetings. We focus on the informational efficiency of different voting mechanisms, taking into account that they affect both management's incentives before the meeting and...

Paper


Posted on 11 August 2021

We analyze the introduction of retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) into a two-tiered monetary system. Deposits, reserves, and CBDC differ in terms of operating costs and liquidity. We identify the optimal...

Paper


Posted on 18 July 2021

We develop a model of political cycles driven by time-varying risk aversion. Agents choose to work in the public or private sector and to vote Democrat or Republican. In equilibrium,...

Paper


Posted on 12 July 2021

Motivated by the recent rise of populism in western democracies, we develop a tractable equilibrium model in which a populist backlash emerges endogenously in a strong economy. In the model,...

Paper


Posted on 21 May 2021

We analyze the political economy causes and consequences of a monetary unification among countries with different institutional quality. Before a common currency countries with stronger institutions have more efficient public...

Paper


Posted on 21 May 2021

This paper introduces a voting model into a setting with negative borrowing externalities to study voter preferences for prudential regulation. Voters internalize the general equilibrium impact of prudential policy on...