Entry and Exit in OTC Derivatives Markets

We develop a parsimonious model to study the equilibrium and socially optimal decisions of banks to enter, trade in, and possibly exit, an OTC market. Although we endow all banks with the same trading technology, banks' optimal entry and trading decisions endogenously lead to a realistic market structure composed of dealers and customers with distinct trading patterns. We decompose banks' entry incentives into incentives to hedge risk and incentives to make intermediation profits. We show that dealer banks enter more than is socially optimal. In the face of large negative shocks, they may also exit more than is socially optimal when markets are not perfectly resilient.     

THE INEFFICIENCY OF WORKER TIME USE

Much work is carried out in short, interrupted segments. This phenomenon, which we label task juggling, has been overlooked by economists. We study the work schedules of some judges in Italy documenting that they do juggle tasks and that juggling causally lowers their productivity substantially. To measure the size of this effect, we show that although all these judges receive the same workload, those who juggle more trials at once instead of working sequentially on few of them at each unit of time, take longer to complete their portfolios of cases. Task juggling seems to have no adverse effect on the quality of the judges' decisions, as measured by the percent of decisions appealed. To identify these causal effects we estimate models with judge fixed effects and we exploit the lottery assigning cases to judges. We discuss whether task juggling can be viewed as inefficient, and provide a back‐of‐the‐envelope calculation of the social cost of longer trials due to task juggling.     

Exploring the antecedents of potential absorptive capacity and its impact on innovation performance

This paper builds upon the theoretical framework developed by Zahra and George [Absorptive capacity: a review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of Management Review 2002;27:185–203] to empirically explore the antecedents of potential absorptive capacity (PAC), i.e. the ability to identify and assimilate external knowledge flows. Based on a sample of 2464 innovative Spanish firms, we find evidence that R&D cooperation, external knowledge acquisition and experience with knowledge search are key antecedents of a firm's PAC. Also, during periods of important internal reshaping, when there are significant changes in strategy, design of the organization and marketing, firms exert more effort to accumulate PAC. Finally, we find that PAC is a source of competitive advantage in innovation, especially in the presence of efficient internal knowledge flows that help reduce the distance between potential and realized capacity.     

Nonexclusive Competition in the Market for Lemons

A seller can trade an endowment of a perfectly divisible good, the quality of which she privately knows. Buyers compete by offering menus of nonexclusive contracts, so that the seller can privately trade with several buyers. In this setting, we show that an equilibrium exists under mild conditions and that aggregate equilibrium allocations are generically unique. Although the good for sale is divisible, in equilibrium the seller ends up trading her whole endowment or not trading at all. Trades take place at a price equal to the expected quality of the good, conditional on the seller being ready to trade at that price. Our model thus provides a novel strategic foundation for Akerlof's (1970) results. It also contrasts with competitive screening models in which contracts are assumed to be exclusive, as in Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976). Latent contracts that are issued but not traded in equilibrium play an important role in our analysis.     

Sektion Soziologische Theorien

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric,Reason, and Reality,by Richard Harvey Brown

Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences , by George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer.     

The food insecurity―obesity paradox as a vicious cycle for women: inequalities and health

Poverty and income inequality undermine women's health in a myriad of ways. This article discusses findings from the Full Plate Project, which addressed women's experience of food security, obesity, and chronic disease in Atlantic Canada. Through first-hand accounts, it identifies a vicious cycle surrounding the food insecurity–obesity paradox. The cycle's core elements included experiences of poverty, food insecurity and nutritional deprivation, weight gain leading to obesity, stress, and experiences of chronic illness. These mainly qualitative findings provide a vivid and multi-layered analysis of the effects of inequalities on health. A majority of Full Plate participants were lone mothers and unattached women, and existing outside of a two-adult member household framework. The vicious cycles experienced are intertwined and cannot be addressed by compartmentalising elements of health or social services. Evidence indicates that policies must respond fully to the social determinants of health and multiple inequalities related to poverty, gender, age, mobility, disability, location, culture, coping skills, and other dynamics.