Heterogeneous information and trade policy

Protectionism enjoys surprising popular support, in spite of deadweight losses. At thesame time, trade barriers appear to decline with public information about protection.This paper develops an electoral model with heterogeneously informed voters whichexplains both facts and predicts the pattern of trade policy across industries. In themodel, each agent endogenously acquires more information about his sector of employment. As a result, voters support protectionism, because they learn more about thetrade barriers that help them as producers than those that hurt them as consumers.In equilibrium, asymmetric information induces a universal protectionist bias. Thestructure of protection is Pareto inefficient, in contrast to existing models. The modelpredicts a Dracula effect: trade policy for a sector is less protectionist when there ismore public information about it. Using a measure of newspaper coverage across industries, I find that cross-sector evidence from the United States bears out my theoreticalpredictions.

Discrete devaluations and multiple equilibria in a first generation model of currency crises

The first generation models of currency crises have often been criticized because they predict that, in the absence of very large triggering shocks, currency attacks should be predictable and lead to small devaluations. This paper shows that these features of first generation models are not robust to the inclusion of private information. In particular, this paper analyzes a generalization of the Krugman-Flood-Garber (KFG) model, which relaxes the assumption that all consumers are perfectly informed about the level of fundamentals. In this environment, the KFG equilibrium of zero devaluation is only one of many possible equilibria. In all the other equilibria, the lack of perfect information delays the attack on the currency past the point at which the shadow exchange rate equals the peg, giving rise to unpredictable and discrete devaluations.

Endogenous spillovers, increased competition and re-organization waves

We consider an entrepreneur that is the sole producer of a costreducing skill, but the entrepreneur that hires a team to usethe skill cannot prevent collusive trade for the innovation related knowledge between employees and competitors. We showthat there are two types of diffusion avoiding strategies forthe entrepreneur to preempt collusive communication i) settingup a large productive capacity (the traditional firm) and ii)keeping a small team (the lean firm). The traditional firm ischaracterized by its many "marginal" employees that work shortdays, receive flat wages and are incompletely informed about the innovation. The lean firm is small in number of employees,engages in complete information sharing among members, that are paid with stock option schemes. We find that the lean firm is superior to the traditional firm when technological entry costsare low and when the sector is immature.

INAPIS(National Aging Program Information System) Activity Report State Fiscal Year 2004, March 3, 2005, Vers. 1

This report shows the number of older Iowans and units of service by service category from Title III funding of the Older Americans Act, through the Administration on Aging (AoA), the Iowa Senior Living Trust Fund and limited state general fund dollars. DEA hopes that this document and the information contained within can be a useful tool for making informed planning decisions. The information provided in this report is the result of hard work and dedication from the Iowa Aging Network who work as a team with the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs toward it’s mission: "To provide advocacy, educational, and prevention services to older Iowans so they can find Iowa a healthy, safe, productive, and enjoyable place to live and work.

INAPIS Activity Report State Fiscal Year 2005, December 2005,

This report shows the number of older Iowans and units of service by service category from Title III funding of the Older Americans Act, through the Administration on Aging (AoA), the Iowa Senior Living Trust Fund and limited state general fund dollars. DEA hopes that this document and the information contained within can be a useful tool for making informed planning decisions. The information provided in this report is the result of hard work and dedication from the Iowa Aging Network who work as a team with the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs toward it’s mission: "To provide advocacy, educational, and prevention services to older Iowans so they can find Iowa a healthy, safe, productive, and enjoyable place to live and work.

INAPIS Activity Report State Fiscal Year 2006, October 2006

This report shows the number of older Iowans and units of service by service category from Title III funding of the Older Americans Act, through the Administration on Aging (AoA), the Iowa Senior Living Trust Fund and limited state general fund dollars. DEA hopes that this document and the information contained within can be a useful tool for making informed planning decisions. The information provided in this report is the result of hard work and dedication from the Iowa Aging Network who work as a team with the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs toward it’s mission: "To provide advocacy, educational, and prevention services to older Iowans so they can find Iowa a healthy, safe, productive, and enjoyable place to live and work.

Endogenous credit cycles

I develop an overlapping-generations framework in which changes in lending standards generateendogenous cycles. In my economy, entrepreneurs who are privately informed about thequality of their projects need to borrow funds. Intermediaries screen entrepreneurs both throughthe amount of investment undertaken and through the level of entrepreneurial net worth.I show that endogenous regime switches in financial contracts from pooling to separatingand vice-versa may generate fluctuations even in the absence of exogenous shocks. Whenthe economy is in the pooling (separating) regime, lending standards seem lax ( tight ) andinvestment is high (low). Differently from the existing literature, my model does not requireentrepreneurial net worth to be counter cyclycal or inconsequential for determining aggregateinvestment.

Customer Focus Newsleter, October, November 2004, Vol. 1, no. 1

With this newsletter, we begin a bi-monthly bulletin to keep the department/agency management teams of state government better informed. We hope to consolidate most of the service update messages we send throughout the month and keep you updated about the work of the Customer Councils. If yours is one of the many departments who participated in the second annual DAS customer satisfaction survey recently, we thank you for taking the time to give us this important feedback. We look forward to sharing survey results with you, and pledge to consider responses carefully as we work to determine benchmarks and set future priorities.

Customer Focus Newsleter, September-October, 2007, Vol. 4, no. 5

A bi-monthly bulletin to keep the department/agency management teams of state government better informed. We hope to consolidate most of the service update messages we send throughout the month and keep you updated about the work of the Customer Councils. If yours is one of the many departments who participated in the second annual DAS customer satisfaction survey recently, we thank you for taking the time to give us this important feedback. We look forward to sharing survey results with you, and pledge to consider responses carefully as we work to determine benchmarks and set future priorities.

Customer Focus Newsleter, February-March 2005, Vol. 2, no. 3

With this newsletter, we begin a bi-monthly bulletin to keep the department/agency management teams of state government better informed. We hope to consolidate most of the service update messages we send throughout the month and keep you updated about the work of the Customer Councils. If yours is one of the many departments who participated in the second annual DAS customer satisfaction survey recently, we thank you for taking the time to give us this important feedback. We look forward to sharing survey results with you, and pledge to consider responses carefully as we work to determine benchmarks and set future priorities.