reputation formation in economic transactions abstract we investigate patterns of information transmission and the evolution of behaviour in standard trust games where reputational information can be exchanged between individual agents within a population but does not become public we vary the nature of information that could be transmitted either a subjective rating or the objective details of a transaction as well as the cost of information transmission either zero or positive we find that information transmission is heavily used if it is costless but only moderately if it has positive cost objective information effectively increases the average amount sent in the trust game and thus efficiency and average profits as well as the return rate only if transmission is costless and therefore is heavily used subjective information a rating only increases transfer and return rates in a control treatment where it becomes publicly available but not for private communication a detailed analysis of the determinants of information transmission shows a positive influence of a the transfer made to a receiver b experience of exploitation and c points to reciprocity in information transmission

the effectiveness of leniency programs when firms choose the degree of collusion abstract an antitrust authority grants leniency pre and post investigation it chooses the probability of an investigation firms pick the degree of collusion the more they collude the higher are profits but so is the probability of detection firms thus trade off higher profits against higher expected fines if firms are sufficiently patient leniency is ineffective it may even increase collusion increasing the probability of an investigation at low levels does not increase deterrence increasing the probability of an investigation at high levels reduces collusion yet never completely with bare pre investigation leniency deterrence is better than without leniency if firms are sufficiently impatient granting leniency pre and post is better than merely pre investigation

el precio de los terrenos y el valor de sus atributos un enfoque de precios hedonicos o one of the most interesting characteristics in urban plots markets is that differentiated products are traded in integrated markets urban plots are composite goods whose utility for the consumer depends on the utility yield by each one of the characteristics or attributes that compose them the technique used to study the contributions of each one of those characteristics to the market price of urban plots in the city of san miguel of tucuman is the econometric estimation of hedonic equations whose regressors are the attributes of the urban plots it is found that location variables commercial areas and commercial surroundings have the greatest impact on prices on the other hand variables associated with the availability of public utilities are less important it is also found that the price per square meter diminishes as the size of the urban plot increases this is consistent with the results obtained by figueroa and lever for the case of santiago de chile

combining cartel penalties and private damage actions the impact on cartel prices abstract in many countries antitrust enforcement by competition authorities through prosecution and the imposition of penalties is complemented in price fixing cases by private damage actions which should affect both cartel deterrence and the prices set by those cartels that do form we show that the impact of combining penalties and damages on cartel prices is not clearcut and depends on both the nature of the penalty regime and the way that damages are calculated we demonstrate this by focusing on two ways of calculating damages that have been advocated in practice and two different forms of the widely used revenue based penalty regime when the simple form of revenue based penalties is in force the standard method of calculating damages worsens its harmful pricing effects whereas the proposed alternative method of calculating damages can overturn them when a more sophisticated form of revenue based penalties is in operation imposing damages will improve its beneficial pricing effects under both methods of damage calculation but the alternative method is more effective in all cases combining penalties and damages improves deterrence

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

drexel burnham lambert s bankruptcy and the subsequent decline in underwriter fees abstract in the 1980s drexel burnham lambert dominated the underwriting of junk bonds with close to a 50 market share in 1990 drexel went bankrupt and was liquidated and the percentage underwriting fees for junk bonds subsequently dropped dramatically we present strong evidence that the exit of drexel burnham lambert and the resulting increase in competition for market share were major contributing factors to the decline in junk bond underwriter fees

the distortive effects of antitrust fines based on revenue in most jurisdictions antitrust fines are based on affected commerce rather than on collusive profits and in some others caps on fines are introduced based on total firm sales rather than on affected commerce we uncover a number of distortions that these policies generate propose simple models to characterise their comparative static properties and quantify them with simulations based on market data we conclude by discussing the obvious need to depart from these distortive rules of thumb that appear to have the potential to substantially reduce social welfare how competition authorities cas should set fines and how they actually do so in practice is a highly debated issue among antitrust practitioners in europe where fines are often set directly by the cas appeal courts have often slashed cas decisions precisely on the grounds of how they set the fines an illuminating example is the uk competition appeal tribunal cat decision in 2011 to cut the fines set by the office of fair trading oft for members of the construction recruitment cartel substantially on the grounds that the wrong measure of affected commerce was used

originator performance cmbs structures and the risk of commercial mortgages this article examines information and incentive problems that can exist in the market for commercial mortgages that are pooled and repackaged as commercial mortgage backed securities cmbss we find that mortgages that are originated by institutions with large negative stock returns in the quarters prior to the origination date tend to have higher credit spreads and default more than other mortgages with similar observable characteristics properties financed with these mortgages also exhibit weaker post securitization operating performance in addition stock price loser institutions are anxious to securitize mortgages they originate more quickly finally we find that credit rating agencies require higher levels of subordination for cmbs pools i e view these pools as riskier that include more mortgages originated by underperforming originators this evidence is consistent with reputation models in which poorly performing originators have less incentive to carefully evaluate the credit quality of prospective borrowers thereby letting relatively riskier mortgages pass through their weaker screening standards the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

is there a safety premium in the design of corporate bond contracts this study examines empirically whether there is a safety premium in the design of bond contracts by highlighting a safety attribute of general mortgage bonds in japan which can give especially st

a hedonic price model for islands abstract this paper addresses the following question why do island prices vary across locations to answer this question an econometric model is developed to explain differences in island prices with respect to their characteristics distance from the coast size economic and political situation of the membership state the findings suggest that an island price is likely to increase with its size and temperature similarly islands which exhibit greater geographical isolation tend to be more highly valued moreover the price of islands increases in response to an increase in per capita income and population density of the states to which they belong reflecting the importance of the public good and externality dimension embodied in real estate parcels on the contrary political instability and war proneness of the membership states have no effect on an island price

modeling the birth and death of cartels with an application to evaluating competition policy one of the primary challenges to measuring the impact of antitrust policy on collusion is that the cartel population is unobservable we observe only the population of discovered cartels to address this challenge a model of cartel creation and dissolution is developed to endogenously derive the populations of cartels and discovered cartels it is then shown how one can infer the impact of antitrust policy on the population of cartels by measuring its impact on the population of discovered cartels in particular the change in the distribution on the duration of discovered cartels could be informative in assessing whether a new antitrust policy is reducing the latent rate of cartels

bank underwriting of debt securities modern evidence this article examines debt securities underwritten by section 20 subsidiaries of bank holding companies relative to those underwritten by investment houses consistent with a net certification effects for banks bank underwriting of lower credit rated firms to whom the bank lends results in relatively higher prices lower yields we find no evidence of conflicts of interest even when an issue is used to repay bank debt further banks bring a relatively larger proportion of small issues to the market contrary to the contention that universal banking stunts availability of finance to small firms bank underwritings appear to benefit small firms article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

optimal cartel pricing in the presence of an antitrust authority the dynamic behavior of a price fixing cartel is explored when it is concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed consistent with preceding static theories the cartel s steady state price is decreasing in the damage multiple and the probability of detection however contrary to those theories it is independent of the level of fixed fines it is also shown that the cartel prices higher when a more competitive benchmark price is used in calculating damages

the market valuation of the fgis grain quality characteristics the issue addressed in this paper is whether the grain quality factors used by the federal grain inspection service in determining the quality grades of wheat exported by the united states including test weight dockage moisture content percentage of foreign material percentage of shrunken and broken kernels and protein content are characteristics that influence the price of wheat for export using shiplot data on the transactions price for hard red winter wheat hard red spring wheat and soft white wheat and the associated quality characteristics covering the period january 1990 to october 1991 and exported to 63 countires the results suggest that only the test weight and the protein content are characteristics consistently valued by the market

foreign entry into underwriting services evidence from japan s big bang deregulation we examined the effect of foreign entry into bond market underwriting activity using issue level data from the japanese samurai and euro yen bond markets we found that the fees charged by japanese underwriters were higher on average than those of foreign underwriters but the difference could be explained by conditioning on issue characteristics our results also suggest that bond issuers sorted properly across underwriters as switching across underwriter nationalities would be expected to result in higher fees however the savings enjoyed by firms issuing with foreign underwriters were modest and statistically insignificant while those of firms issuing with japanese underwriters were substantial and statistically significant this result suggests that japanese underwriters priced their services aggressively over the sample period perhaps in an effort to retain or gain market share this conjecture is supported by a matching exercise that examined the liberalization of foreign underwriter access to the samurai bond market using euro yen bond issues as a control foreign entry led to a statistically and economically significant decrease of 16 basis points on average in underwriting fees in the samurai bond market overall our results suggest that the international market for japanese bond underwriting services was partially segmented by nationality as issuers appear to have preferred habitats but that liberalization increased overall market competition

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

valuation of the quality characteristics of japanese soybean imports the implicit prices of the physical and intrinsic characteristics of soybeans exported by the united states are estimated the results suggest that the us grades and standards assigned to a shipment either do not provide information valued by the market or the existence of us grades and standards has resulted in the definition of a standard of quality that is met by all exporters additionally in japan there are two identifiable soybean markets a premium food bean market and a crushing market the soybeans going into the food market for processing can be identified by their lower oil content lower percentage of split and damaged beans and a lower amount of foreign material as well as smaller shipment sizes

penalizing cartels the case for basing penalties on price overcharge yannis katsoulacos acknowledges that this research has been co financed by the european union european social fund esf and greek national funds through the operational program education and lifelong learning of the national strategic reference framework nsrf research funding program aristeia coleg

a tip of the iceberg the probability of catching cartels summary reliable estimates of crime detection probabilities could help in designing better sanctions and improve our understanding of the efficiency of law enforcement for cartels we only have limited knowledge on the rate at which these illegal practices are discovered in comparison to previous works this paper offers a more parsimonious and simple to use method to estimate time dependent cartel discovery rates while allowing for heterogeneity across firms it draws on capture recapture methods that are frequently used in ecology to make inferences on various wildlife population characteristics an application of this method provides evidence that less than a fifth of cartelising firms are discovered copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

investment bank reputation and the price and quality of underwriting services the relation between investment bank reputation and the price and quality of bond underwriting services is studied here after controlling for endogeneity in issuerunderwriter matching i find that reputable banks obtain lower yields and charge higher fees but issuers net proceeds are higher these relations are pronounced in the junk bond category in which reputable banks underwriting criteria are most stringent these findings suggest that banks underwriting decisions reflect reputation concerns and are thus informative of issue quality they also suggest that economic rents are earned on reputation and thereby provide continued incentives for underwriters to maintain reputation in capital markets investment banks play the important role of bridging firms that need capital with investors that seek investment opportunities intermediation services are valuable first because the banks specialization in the sales and marketing of securities helps lower the issuers transactional costs of borrowing but perhaps more importantly investment banks can provide value through their role in lowering the issuers informational cost of capital this role arises from the information asymmetry that typically exists between insiders the issuing firms and outsiders the investors in security issuance events such an information gap as akerlof demonstrated in his classic 1970 paper at best causes investors to discount the securities and at worst can threaten the existence of the market investment banks standing between the insiders and the outsiders seem to be in the perfect position to reduce information asymmetry and lower the cost of capital that issuers would otherwise have to pay but how does an investment bank solve its own information problem visa vis the investor one solution is the reputation capital at stake for the intermediary a key difference between investment banks and ordinary issuers lily hua fang is from finance area insead this paper is based on a chapter of my dissertation i am indebted to my advisors gary gorton robert holthausen andrew metrick david musto and ayako yasuda for their guidance and support i owe special thanks to an anonymous referee whose insightful comments helped me improve the paper greatly i also want to thank franklin allen john core petra todd jay ritter and robert stambaugh the editor for valuable feedback comments and suggestions from seminar participants at boston college insead

the deterrent effect of antitrust enforcement in this paper we formulate and test a model of collusive pricing in the presence of antitrust enforcement we show that a cartel s optimal price is likely to be neither the competitive price nor the price that the cartel would set in the absence of antitrust enforcement but rather an intermediate price that depends on the levels of antitrust enforcement efforts and penalties our empirical results reveal that increasing antitrust enforcement in the presence of a credible threat of large damage awards has the deterrent effect of reducing mark ups in the bread industry

quantifying the deterrent effect of anticartel enforcement this paper presents a rare attempt to quantify the deterrent effect of anti cartel policy it develops a conceptual framework which establishes the sort of information necessary for such quantification this is then illustrated and calibrated by drawing upon existing literatures and using evidence from legal cartels to approximate what would be observed absent policy measuring impact by the proportion of all potential harm that is deterred our best estimate is two thirds and even on conservative assumptions at least half of all harms or seven times the detected harm is deterred

consumer sorting and hedonic valuation of wine attributes exploiting data from a field experiment this article uses a novel experimental approach to measure consumer willingness to pay wtp for wine attributes we invited customers of a local supermarket who had selected a bottle of wine to purchase to participate in a valuation experiment integrating their original wine choice into the experiment each participant evaluated six alternative wines generating a rich set of data on willingness to pay and consumer characteristics the data from the experiment allow us to compare standard shelf price based wine attribute valuation estimates with estimates using wtp data and an increasing amount of information about individual consumers the full model employs individual fixed effects to estimate wtp parameters without bias from consumer sorting or supply side influences our wtp estimates for wine attributes differ markedly from previous attribute value estimates consumers in our sample display clear and stable preferences for wine varieties but less clear preferences for appellations our results suggest caution is needed in using market prices to estimate parameters of the consumer valuation function for product attributes

uninsured deposits as a monitoring device their impact on bond yields of banks abstract we empirically analyze the impact of uninsured deposits on a bank s cost of public debt uninsured depositors can exert market discipline over a bank and potentially reduce its agency cost of debt through informed monitoring we use a sample of public bond issues by u s bank holding companies from 1994 to 2013 and find statistically strong evidence that banks with more uninsured deposits relative to their assets issue bonds with a lower interest rate findings suggest a one standard deviation increase in uninsured deposits is associated with a 46 64 basis point decrease in bond yield in addition we find that bonds issued by banks with higher default risk or lower reputation benefit more from uninsured savers our paper contributes to the literature that explores market discipline and provides evidence that banks can benefit from it through a lower borrowing cost

strategic leniency and cartel enforcement the cornerstone of cartel enforcement in the united states and elsewhere is a commitment to the lenient prosecution of early confessors a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency i develop a theoretical model of cartel behavior that provides empirical predictions and moment conditions and apply the model to the complete set of indictments and information reports issued over a 20 year span statistical tests are consistent with the notion that leniency enhances deterrence and detection capabilities the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime jel d43 l12 l13 k21 in 1993 the department of justice doj introduced a new leniency program with the intent of destabilizing existing cartels and deterring new cartels the program commits the doj to the lenient prosecution of early confessors in particular it guarantees complete amnesty from federal prosecution to the first confessor from each cartel provided that an investigation into the confes sor s cartel is not already underway it also offers discretionary penalty reductions to conspirators who confess when an investigation is already ongoing the new leniency program has become the cornerstone of cartel enforcement efforts in the united states e g scott d hammond 2004 and recently has inspired antitrust authorities in australia canada the european union japan south korea and elsewhere to introduce similar programs oecd 2002 2003 this paper tests the efficacy of the new leniency program the results have implications for market efficiency and enforcement efforts against cartels and other forms of organized crime a burgeoning game theoretical literature is ambiguous regarding the impacts of leniency a common finding is that leniency may destabilize cartels because conspirators can simultane

investment bank reputation information production and financial intermediation we model reputation acquisition by investment banks in the equity market entrepreneurs sell shares in an asymmetrically informed equity market either directly or using an investment bank investment banks who interact repeatedly with the equity market evaluate entrepreneurs projects and report to investors in return for a fee setting strict evaluation standards unobservable to investors is costly for investment banks inducing moral hazard investment banks credibility therefore depends on their equity marketing history investment banks evaluation standards their reputations underwriter compensation the market value of equity sold and entrepreneurs choice between underwritten and nonunderwritten equity issues emerge endogenously

anatomy of initial public offerings of common stock initial public offerings of common stocks ipos are typically underpriced in this paper the author develops and tests the hypothesis that underpricing serves as a form of insurance against legal liability and the associated damages to the reputations of investment bankers the empirical results based on samples of ipos that were brought to the market before and after the securities act of 1933 provide considerable support for the implicit insurance hypothesis specifically gross underpricing and market segmentation between prestigious and fringe investment bankers in originating unseasoned new issues appear to be peculiar to the post 1933 era a number of studies have documented that unseasoned common stocks typically garner large positive abnormal returns during a short period following the initial offering in his recent review of the empirical evidence on the initial returns of common stock offerings smith 36 concluded that the returns from offer price to after market price have exceeded fifteen percent his calculations did not include some of the earlier results obtained by mcdonald and fisher 23 and logue 20 when their samples are combined with those in smith s review the initial returns of unseasoned equity offerings appear even larger over seventeen percent these results imply that underwriters consistently offer the securities at substantial discounts from their values that are set in the after market in other words initial public offerings ipos appear to be underpriced what is even more puzzling is the fact that in some time periods underpricing appears to be systematically larger than in other periods ibbotson and jaffe 15 and ritter 29 have documented that during the postwar era there have been a number of periods in which the initial returns of common stocks have been extremely high ritter for example reported that the average return from the offer price to the first after market price was over forty eight percent for ipos in 1980 and 1981 1 similarly the initial returns of unseasoned issues of common stock brought to the market in 1950 1951 1961 and 1968 were unusually large these periods in which ipos were grossly underpriced are referred to as the hotissue markets why do investment bankers underprice ipos why do issuers

estimating market demand for fresh yam characteristics using contingent valuation implications for crop breeding and production choices this study uses the box cox bc transformations to examine nonlinearity in price modeling and compare results from several functional specifications in hedonic price analysis of yam in togo based on a sample of 6 402 observations on price and produce characteristics generated through a market experiment it is found that the bc quadratic asymmetric specification is the most suitable function several characteristics are valued more than others and prices vary across species time and market sites some residual symptoms of pest and disease damages on yam tubers reduce their market values tuber weight exhibits a diminishing marginal value and price per kilogram decreases above an optimum size therefore producers do not derive additional reward from extra large tubers we conclude that to effectively access and benefit from urban markets producers should focus on small size low weight and conical shaped tubers which are easy to process and meet the esthetic qualities preferred by urban consumers the implications for research on improved variety development to reduce poverty and for crop and resource management practices are drawn

what can the duration of discovered cartels tell us about the duration of all cartels estimates of average cartel duration and the annual probability of cartel death are based on data for discovered cartels it is recognised that these estimates could be biased because the population of discovered cartels may not be a representative sample of the latent population of cartels this article constructs a birth death discovery process to investigate the source and direction of possible biases bayesian inference is used to provide bounds on the extent of the bias and deliver an improved set of beliefs on the probability of cartel death

cartel pricing dynamics in the presence of an antitrust authority cartel pricing is characterized when firms are concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed balancing concerns about maintaining the stability of the cartel with those of avoiding detection the cartel may either i gradually raise price to its steady state level or ii gradually raise price and then have it decline to its steady state level antitrust laws may have a perverse effect as they make cartel stability easier and thus allow for higher cartel prices

cartel overcharges an empirical analysis abstract using 406 overcharge estimates the study analyzes the impact of cartel characteristics and the market environment on the magnitude of overcharges attained by cartels in different geographic markets and during six antitrust law regimes starting from the 18th century the median overcharge achieved by cartels is 20 percent of selling price as predicted by cartel theory market structure is an important determinant of the overcharge level markets where cartels have high market shares tend to have higher overcharges the number of cartel participants and the size inequality among them are inversely related to the overcharge level international cartels impose higher overcharges than domestic cartels overcharges attained in the us and european markets tend to be lower than overcharges achieved in the asian markets and the rest of the world results on the impact of changes in the antitrust law environment over time on the size of cartel overcharges are mixed however there is some evidence indicating that the lowest overcharges are associated with the latest antitrust law period

antitrust penalties and the implications of empirical evidence on cartel overcharges research for this paper was supported by a grant from the economic and social research council res 062 23 2211

liquidity crisis relationship lending and corporate finance abstract this paper investigates the consequences of the liquidity shocks in wholesale funding markets during the 2007 2009 financial crisis on bank lending and corporate financing we show that banks that relied more heavily on wholesale funding contracted lending more severely than banks that relied more on insured deposits we then examine the effects of loan contraction on the financial positions of publicly traded firms we find that both during and after the crisis the change in leverage of bank dependent firms is less than that of firms with access to public debt markets in addition bank dependent firms rely more on cash than net equity issuance to finance operations we also find that firms with established bank lending relationships weather the crisis better such firms are able to attain higher levels of leverage during the crisis add to their cash holdings secure new bank credit and achieve higher profitability as a result

estimation of a hedonic price equation for bordeaux wine does quality matter in this paper the hedonic price technique is applied to bordeaux wine in the hedonic price function we include not only the objective characteristics appearing on the label of the bottle but also the sensory characteristics of the wine our data come from an experimental study in which juries have evaluated and graded a sample of bordeaux wines the estimation of the hedonic price equation shows that the market price is essentially determined by the objective characteristics the estimation of a jury grade equation shows that quality unlike the market price is essentially determined by the sensory characteristics

venture capitalist certification in initial public offerings this paper provides support for the certification role of venture capitalists in initial public offerings consistent with the certification hypothesis a comparison of venture capital backed ipos with a control sample of nonventure capital backed ipos from 1983 through 1987 matched as closely as possible by industry and offering size indicates that venture capital backing results in significantly lower initial returns and gross spreads in effect the presence of venture capitalists in the issuing firms serves to lower the total costs of going public and to maximize the net proceeds to the offering firm in addition we document that venture capitalists retain a significant portion of their holdings in the firm after the ipo the ability of third party specialists to certify the value of securities issued by relatively unknown firms in capital markets that are characterized by asymmetric information between corporate insiders and public investors has attracted much academic interest in recent years several authors including james 1990 blackwell marr and spivey 1990 and barry muscarella peavy and vetsuypens 1991 have developed and tested models based at least in part on the formal certification hypothesis presented in booth and smith 1986 a related body of work represented by deangelo 1981 beatty and ritter 1986 titman and trueman 1986 johnson and miller 1988 carter 1990 simon 1990 and carter and manaster 1990 has examined how investment bankers and auditors help resolve the asymmetric information inherent in the initial public offering ipo process in this paper we examine whether the presence of venture capitalists as investors in a firm going public can certify that the offering price of the issue reflects all available and relevant inside information we hypothesize that venture capitalists can perform this function that it will be an economically

does enforcement deter cartels a tale of two tails this paper investigates the deterrent impact of anti cartel enforcement it is shown theoretically that if enforcement is effective in deterring and constraining cartels then there will be fewer cartels with low overcharges and fewer with high overcharges this prediction provides an indirect method for testing whether the enforcement of competition law is effective using historical data on legal cartels to generate the counterfactual we find significantly less mass in the tails of the overcharge distribution compared to illegal cartels this result is robust to controlling for confounding factors and we interpret this as the first tentative confirmation of effective deterrence

hedonic prices for a nondurable good the case of breakfast cereals numerous studies have estimated hedonic price functions for durable goods in this paper the authors apply the methodology to breakfast cereals a nondurable good they employ maximum likelihood to estimate the hedonic price functions using data from three large supermarkets the price function depends on characteristics that provide taste nutrition and convenience to consumers and the estimates yield insights into pricing policies consumer preferences and consumer use of information copyright 1991 by mit press

shopping around how households adjusted food spending over the great recession over the great recession real wages stagnated and unemployment increased concurrently food prices rose sharply outstripping growth in food expenditure and leading to a reduction in calories purchased this has led to concern about rising food poverty we study british households to assess how they adjusted to changes in the economic environment we show they switched to cheaper calories implying food consumption was smoother than expenditure we use longitudinal data to quantify the way households lowered their per calorie spending and show they done this in part by increasing shopping eort and without lowering the nutritional quality of

optimal corporate leniency programs this study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm to come forward it is also shown that restrictions should be placed on when amnesty is awarded though it can be optimal to award amnesty even when the antitrust authority is very likely to win the case without insider testimony