If citizens of different countries belonging to an economic union adhere to different and deeply rooted cultural norms, when these countries interact their leaders may find it impossible to agree on effi cient policies, especially in hard times. Political leaders’ actions are bound to express policies that do not violate these norms. This paper provides a simple positive theory and a compelling...

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), including organic LEDs and polymer LEDs, have been studied intensively for use in displays and interior lighting due to their promising advantages of high effi ciency, high contrast ratio, long lifetime and low power consumption. [ 1 , 2 ] However, in a conventionally structured LED, less than 20% of the generated light is emitted as useful radiation. [ 3 , 4 ] Not...

We study dynamic bargaining with private information and a deadline. As commitment power disappears, there is a clear "deadline effect" that is, trade takes place smoothly before the deadline and with an atom right at the deadline. Prices, timing of trade and the deadline effect respond to the consequences of not reaching an agreement. Bleaker disagreement options lead to more trade and proport...

Our industrialized society feeds greedily and insatiably on energy made available by burning fossil fuels—coal, petroleum, and natural gas. This stored energy was captured from the sun eons ago by plants whose remains became buried deep in the earth’s crust. These fossil fuels are of course limited, and the effi ciency with which we use them, which depends on our level of technology, will deter...

Today’s modern commercial and military communication systems are demanding better performance with regards to power, effi ciency, linearity and operating bandwidth. As such, extra considerations must be placed on designing the internal components of the systems, including the low-noise and power amplifi ers, to maximize performance. In order to reach higher effi ciencies, signifi cant research ...

Collusion is when firms coordinate on suppressing competition, and coordination typically requires that firms communicate in some manner. This study conducts experiments to determine what modes of communication are able to produce and sustain collusion and how the effi cacy of communication depends on firm heterogeneity and the number of firms. We consider two different communication treatments...

The essentiality of money is commonly justified on effi ciency grounds. In this paper, we propose an alternative view on the essentiality of money. We consider an economy with limited monitoring where agents have to coordinate on the use of two alternative technologies of exchange, money and credit. We show that although credit strictly dominates money from an effi ciency perspective, money is ...

Distressed firms are vulnerable to ineffi cient panic-based runs of their workers, suppliers, and customers. A policymaker may try to prevent such a run by pledging to protect the interests of these stakeholders should a firm cease to do business. However, this promise also enables the firm to demand better terms of trade from its stakeholders, which blunts the policy’s effectiveness. We show h...