Pub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-12-29DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106132
Sihao Chen , David Cook , Haichao Fan , Juanyi Xu
In this paper, we study the impact of labor mobility on the welfare cost of a currency union in an open economy New Keynesian model. We find that the relationship between labor mobility and exchange rate flexibility depends on the source of asymmetric regional shocks. With demand shocks, labor mobility reduces the welfare cost of a union by reducing the cost of shifting labor to concentrated areas of high demand. With supply shocks, flexible exchange rates can work in conjunction with higher labor mobility to reallocate the factors of production to higher productivity regions of potential currency areas. Therefore, higher labor mobility can widen the welfare gap between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes, implying areas with high inter-regional labor mobility may benefit more from exchange rate flexibility.
{"title":"The shocks matter: Labor mobility and the welfare cost of a currency union","authors":"Sihao Chen , David Cook , Haichao Fan , Juanyi Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106132","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106132","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we study the impact of labor mobility on the welfare cost of a currency union in an open economy New Keynesian model. We find that the relationship between labor mobility and exchange rate flexibility depends on the source of asymmetric regional shocks. With demand shocks, labor mobility reduces the welfare cost of a union by reducing the cost of shifting labor to concentrated areas of high demand. With supply shocks, flexible exchange rates can work in conjunction with higher labor mobility to reallocate the factors of production to higher productivity regions of potential currency areas. Therefore, higher labor mobility can widen the welfare gap between fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes, implying areas with high inter-regional labor mobility may benefit more from exchange rate flexibility.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"232 ","pages":"Article 106132"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145940152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2026.106143
Luis Araujo , Ryuichiro Izumi , Fabrizio Mattesini
We study how access to wholesale funding affects bank fragility when policymakers can intervene efficiently during a run. In a Diamond-Dybvig environment with a wholesale market, banks can refinance rather than liquidate assets. We show that the effect of wholesale borrowing on fragility depends both on the cost of funds and on the allocation of seniority among creditors. When wholesale lenders are senior, the availability of funds decreases fragility when borrowing is inexpensive; while when borrowing is costly, greater access to wholesale funding increases fragility because it delays intervention and increases depositors’ incentives to run. In contrast, when depositors are senior, wholesale borrowing always decreases fragility. These findings highlight that seniority allocation is a key determinant of how wholesale funding shapes policy responses and bank fragility. In particular, although recent episodes suggest that wholesale investors typically hold seniority, our findings suggest that granting priority to depositors could make the banking system less fragile.
{"title":"Bank runs and interventions with wholesale funding","authors":"Luis Araujo , Ryuichiro Izumi , Fabrizio Mattesini","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2026.106143","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2026.106143","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study how access to wholesale funding affects bank fragility when policymakers can intervene efficiently during a run. In a Diamond-Dybvig environment with a wholesale market, banks can refinance rather than liquidate assets. We show that the effect of wholesale borrowing on fragility depends both on the cost of funds and on the allocation of seniority among creditors. When wholesale lenders are senior, the availability of funds decreases fragility when borrowing is inexpensive; while when borrowing is costly, greater access to wholesale funding increases fragility because it delays intervention and increases depositors’ incentives to run. In contrast, when depositors are senior, wholesale borrowing always decreases fragility. These findings highlight that seniority allocation is a key determinant of how wholesale funding shapes policy responses and bank fragility. In particular, although recent episodes suggest that wholesale investors typically hold seniority, our findings suggest that granting priority to depositors could make the banking system less fragile.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"232 ","pages":"Article 106143"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146078398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-12-21DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106131
Xu Lang , Zaifu Yang
We propose a condition under which a system of linear inequalities can be found to characterize ex post and interim allocation mechanisms that assign multiple heterogeneous indivisible objects to many agents and also satisfy complex distributional constraints in an incomplete information environment. This condition is called total unimodularity, a well-recognized and rich class of matrices whose entries are , 0, or 1. The condition is so general as to extend and unify a number of well-known results, offer new and general results, and cover such as hierarchies, bihierarchies, adjacency, dependence chains, M♮-concavity, 1-substitutes, and paramodularity. We also provide several applications of practical interest.
{"title":"Random allocations of multiple objects with incomplete information","authors":"Xu Lang , Zaifu Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106131","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106131","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose a condition under which a system of linear inequalities can be found to characterize ex post and interim allocation mechanisms that assign multiple heterogeneous indivisible objects to many agents and also satisfy complex distributional constraints in an incomplete information environment. This condition is called total unimodularity, a well-recognized and rich class of matrices whose entries are <span><math><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></math></span>, 0, or 1. The condition is so general as to extend and unify a number of well-known results, offer new and general results, and cover such as hierarchies, bihierarchies, adjacency, dependence chains, <em>M</em><sup>♮</sup>-concavity, 1-substitutes, and paramodularity. We also provide several applications of practical interest.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"232 ","pages":"Article 106131"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145940150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-09DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106126
Mikhail Anufriev , Andrea Deghi , Valentyn Panchenko , Paolo Pin
We develop a theoretical model of network formation in the overnight interbank market, where banks manage liquidity under reserve uncertainty by strategically forming bilateral lending relationships. The model incorporates counterparty risk and the central bank’s corridor system, yielding endogenously determined equilibrium networks. A key result, relevant for systemic stability policy, is that the equilibrium network is bipartite: active banks act either as lenders or borrowers, and no strategic (interbank) intermediation arises. We also show that, via temporal aggregation of equilibrium networks, apparent intermediation and a core-periphery structure emerge. We validate these predictions using e-MID market data, showing that the model reconciles the frequency-dependent network features documented in the empirical literature for this market.
{"title":"A model of network formation for the overnight interbank market: When is core-periphery an illusion?","authors":"Mikhail Anufriev , Andrea Deghi , Valentyn Panchenko , Paolo Pin","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106126","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106126","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We develop a theoretical model of network formation in the overnight interbank market, where banks manage liquidity under reserve uncertainty by strategically forming bilateral lending relationships. The model incorporates counterparty risk and the central bank’s corridor system, yielding endogenously determined equilibrium networks. A key result, relevant for systemic stability policy, is that the equilibrium network is bipartite: active banks act either as lenders or borrowers, and no strategic (interbank) intermediation arises. We also show that, via temporal aggregation of equilibrium networks, apparent intermediation and a core-periphery structure emerge. We validate these predictions using e-MID market data, showing that the model reconciles the frequency-dependent network features documented in the empirical literature for this market.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106126"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145790381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-19DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106112
Kyungmin Kim , Nenad Kos
We study design and pricing by a monopolist who has no information about the distribution of consumers’ tastes and maximizes her profit under the worst-case scenario. We show that her optimal strategy takes a simple form of dividing the taste space into a finite number of equal-length intervals and serving consumers on a randomly chosen interval. We obtain this result by studying the dual problem of finding a distribution of consumers’ tastes that minimizes the seller’s profit and establishing strong duality. The profit-minimizing distributions exhibit a uniformity property, assigning equal probability mass to a finite number of partition cells of equal width. Through the dual, we also determine the seller’s lowest profit in the Bayesian setting, establish that it is strictly positive, and derive the set of achievable profits.
{"title":"Robust product design and pricing","authors":"Kyungmin Kim , Nenad Kos","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106112","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106112","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study design and pricing by a monopolist who has no information about the distribution of consumers’ tastes and maximizes her profit under the worst-case scenario. We show that her optimal strategy takes a simple form of dividing the taste space into a finite number of equal-length intervals and serving consumers on a randomly chosen interval. We obtain this result by studying the dual problem of finding a distribution of consumers’ tastes that minimizes the seller’s profit and establishing strong duality. The profit-minimizing distributions exhibit a uniformity property, assigning equal probability mass to a finite number of partition cells of equal width. Through the dual, we also determine the seller’s lowest profit in the Bayesian setting, establish that it is strictly positive, and derive the set of achievable profits.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106112"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145624930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-27DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106133
Carl-Christian Groh
I study a homogeneous goods’ model in which a consumer attains consumption opportunities via sequential search. Whenever a firm is visited by the consumer, the firm observes a private signal about the consumer’s valuation and price discriminates based on this information. If the signal is sufficiently precise and search costs are at intermediate levels, an equilibrium in which the consumer visits multiple firms with positive probability emerges. At low search costs, firms offer low prices to deter search, and the consumer does not visit multiple firms. The equilibrium prices are minimal if search costs are negligible and, if the signal is sufficiently precise, the equilibrium prices are maximal at intermediate levels of search costs.
{"title":"Competitive price discrimination, imperfect information, and consumer search","authors":"Carl-Christian Groh","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106133","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106133","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>I study a homogeneous goods’ model in which a consumer attains consumption opportunities via sequential search. Whenever a firm is visited by the consumer, the firm observes a private signal about the consumer’s valuation and price discriminates based on this information. If the signal is sufficiently precise and search costs are at intermediate levels, an equilibrium in which the consumer visits multiple firms with positive probability emerges. At low search costs, firms offer low prices to deter search, and the consumer does not visit multiple firms. The equilibrium prices are minimal if search costs are negligible and, if the signal is sufficiently precise, the equilibrium prices are maximal at intermediate levels of search costs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106133"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145883928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-01DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106124
Hung-Chi Chang , Yiting Li
{"title":"Corrigendum to “The screening role of market tightness in a competitive search equilibrium with adverse selection” [Journal of Economic Theory 225 (2025) 105995]","authors":"Hung-Chi Chang , Yiting Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106124","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106124","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145925355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-30DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106125
Nicolas Figueroa , Nicolas Inostroza
A liquidity-constrained asset owner screens an informed investor using financial securities. Information-insensitive securities reduce the investor’s information rents. The optimal screening mechanism consists of a monotone debt menu where more optimistic investor types purchase larger amounts of debt. Interestingly, the issuer may benefit from trading with a better informed investor. For any monotone debt menu, as the asset’s cash flows more accurately describe the investor’s private information (Lehmann, 1988), the trade surplus unambiguously increases. Further, fixing the optimal debt menu, when the investor’s private information originates from location experiments, increasing accuracy decreases (increases) information rents for low (high) types. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee that the issuer strictly benefits from trading with a better informed investor. Our results imply that selling debt is an effective approach to raise funds in financial markets even when investors hold superior private information and provide a novel rationale for the emergence of venture debt.
{"title":"Optimal screening with securities","authors":"Nicolas Figueroa , Nicolas Inostroza","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106125","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106125","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A liquidity-constrained asset owner screens an informed investor using financial securities. Information-insensitive securities reduce the investor’s information rents. The optimal screening mechanism consists of a <em>monotone debt menu</em> where more optimistic investor types purchase larger amounts of debt. Interestingly, the issuer may benefit from trading with a better informed investor. For any monotone debt menu, as the asset’s cash flows more accurately describe the investor’s private information (Lehmann, 1988), the trade surplus unambiguously increases. Further, fixing the optimal debt menu, when the investor’s private information originates from location experiments, increasing accuracy decreases (increases) information rents for low (high) types. We provide sufficient conditions that guarantee that the issuer strictly benefits from trading with a better informed investor. Our results imply that selling debt is an effective approach to raise funds in financial markets even when investors hold superior private information and provide a novel rationale for the emergence of venture debt.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106125"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145737863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-11-15DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106111
Joel Watson
This article identifies sufficient conditions under which a partial construction of sequential equilibrium—characterizing beliefs and behavior for only a subset of the information sets—is sufficient for the existence of a sequential equilibrium that coincides with the partial construction in a suitable way. Illustrative applications are also presented.
{"title":"Partially constructed sequential equilibrium","authors":"Joel Watson","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106111","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106111","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article identifies sufficient conditions under which a partial construction of sequential equilibrium—characterizing beliefs and behavior for only a subset of the information sets—is sufficient for the existence of a sequential equilibrium that coincides with the partial construction in a suitable way. Illustrative applications are also presented.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145737859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2025-12-02DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.106114
Susanne Goldlücke , Thomas Tröger
We present a class of simple transfer-free rules for assigning an unpleasant task among a group of agents: agents decide simultaneously whether or not to volunteer; if the number of volunteers exceeds a threshold number, the task is assigned to a volunteer; otherwise, the task is assigned to a non-volunteer. In particular, the rule may ask for multiple volunteers although one agent is sufficient to perform the task. In a setting in which agents care about who performs the task, any multiple-volunteers rule yields a strict interim Pareto improvement over random task assignment. Some volunteers rule is utilitarian optimal across all transfer-free binary mechanisms, and a rule with a large threshold reaches the first-best approximately if the group is large. Similar results hold for the problem of assigning a pleasant task. In that case, the task is assigned to a volunteer if and only if there are sufficiently few volunteers.
{"title":"The multiple-volunteers principle","authors":"Susanne Goldlücke , Thomas Tröger","doi":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106114","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jet.2025.106114","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a class of simple transfer-free rules for assigning an unpleasant task among a group of agents: agents decide simultaneously whether or not to volunteer; if the number of volunteers exceeds a threshold number, the task is assigned to a volunteer; otherwise, the task is assigned to a non-volunteer. In particular, the rule may ask for multiple volunteers although one agent is sufficient to perform the task. In a setting in which agents care about who performs the task, any multiple-volunteers rule yields a strict interim Pareto improvement over random task assignment. Some volunteers rule is utilitarian optimal across all transfer-free binary mechanisms, and a rule with a large threshold reaches the first-best approximately if the group is large. Similar results hold for the problem of assigning a pleasant task. In that case, the task is assigned to a volunteer if and only if there are sufficiently few volunteers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48393,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Theory","volume":"231 ","pages":"Article 106114"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145694214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}