Contracts and externalities: How things fall apart

Why do Things Fall Apart? A Psychological Analysis of Okonkwo's Personality and his Ultimate Demise in Chinua Achebe's Novel Things Fall Apart

Forward Contracts and Generator Market Power: How Externalities Reduce Benefits in Equilibrium

Research has shown that forward contracts for electricity can reduce market power and increase producer output. This is frequently used as justification for policy interventions requiring that consumers purchase forward capacity, but it is not a sufficient justification because rational consumers can account for market power impacts when making forward contracting decisions. Advocates for capac...

Cheap Talk and Bogus Network Externalities in the Emerging Technology Market

M emerging technologies exhibit path-dependent demands driven by positive network feedback. Such network effects profoundly impact marketing strategists’ thinking in today’s network economy. However, the significant network externalities expected by many people often fail to materialize in the emerging technology market. We analyze this phenomenon in the context of a technology distribution cha...

How Things Fall Apart: Pleonexia, Parasitic Greed, and Decline in Greek Thought from Thucydides to Polybius

Title of Document: HOW THINGS FALL APART: PLEONEXIA, PARASITIC GREED, AND DECLINE IN GREEK THOUGHT FROM THUCYDIDES TO POLYBIUS William D. Burghart, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Professor Arthur M. Eckstein, Department of History This dissertation examines how Greek authors from the fifth to the second century BCE employed the concept of pleonexia to explain why cities lost power on t...

On the Nonexclusivity of Loan Contracts: An Empirical Investigation

A string of theoretical papers shows that the non-exclusivity of credit contracts generates important negative contractual externalities. Employing a unique dataset, we identify how these externalities affect the supply of credit. Using internal information on a creditor’s willingness to lend, we find that a creditor reduces its credit supply when a borrower obtains a loan at another creditor (...