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Working Paper
Firms as clubs in Walrasian markets with private information
Using private information and club theories, this paper develops a theory of firms in general equilibrium. Firms are defined to be assignments of technologies and agents to clubs. In equilibrium, firms form endogenously and multiple types may co-exist. We formulate the general equilibrium problem as both a Pareto program and as a competitive equilibrium. Welfare and existence theorems are provided. In the competitive equilibrium, club memberships are priced and purchased, so the market determines which organizations exist as well as who is a member. Pareto optima and competitive equilibria of ...
Working Paper
Network diseconomies and optimal structure
This paper explores the effect on costs when firms within an industry must interact with each other in the normal course of business. Such interaction will generally cause the socially optimal scale of each firm to deviate from its minimum average cost scale. In addition, the socially optimal industry structure may be more concentrated than conventional firm-level cost studies would suggest and may also differ from the unregulated (free-entry) equilibrium structure. These concepts, while potentially applicable to several industries, are here made more precise for the banking industry, both ...
Journal Article
Owners versus managers: who controls the bank?
Journal Article
Trends in financial market concentration and their implications for market stability
The link between financial market concentration and stability is a topic of great interest to policymakers and other market participants. Are concentrated markets - those where a relatively small number of firms hold large market shares - inherently more prone to disruption? This article considers that question by drawing on academic studies as well as introducing new analysis. Like other researchers, the authors find an ambiguous relationship between concentration and instability when a large firm in a concentrated market fails. In a complementary review of concentration trends across a ...
Working Paper
Stable cartels with a Cournot fringe
Working Paper
Testing for expense preference behavior using cost data