D - Microeconomics
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Online Privacy and Information Disclosure by Consumers
A consumer discloses information to a multi-product seller, which learns about the consumer’s preferences, sets prices, and makes product recommendations. While the consumer benefits from accurate product recommendations, the seller may use the information to price discriminate. -
Central Bank Communication That Works: Lessons from Lab Experiments
We use controlled laboratory experiments to test the causal effects of central bank communication on economic expectations and to distinguish the underlying mechanisms of those effects. In an experiment where subjects learn to forecast economic variables, we find that central bank communication has a stabilizing effect on individual and aggregate outcomes and that the size of the effect varies with the type of communication. -
Reassessing the Growth of HELOCs in Canada Using New Regulatory Data
Using new regulatory data on residential secured lending from Canadian banks, we assess the growth rate of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). -
Firm-level Investment Under Imperfect Capital Markets in Ukraine
This paper develops and estimates a model of firm-level fixed capital investment when firms face borrowing constraints. -
Non-Resident Taxes and the Role of House Price Expectations
In recent years, the governments of Ontario and British Columbia have imposed taxes on purchases by non-Canadian residents of residential properties in certain jurisdictions. -
Limiting Sender’s Information in Bayesian Persuasion
This paper studies how the outcome of Bayesian persuasion depends on a sender’s information. I study a game in which, prior to the sender’s information disclosure, the designer can restrict the most informative signal that the sender can generate. -
Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies
This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints. -
The Productivity Slowdown in Canada: An ICT Phenomenon?
We ask whether a weaker contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to productivity growth could account for the productivity slowdown observed in Canada since the early 2000s. To answer this question, we consider several methods capturing channels through which ICT could affect aggregate productivity growth. -
2017 Methods-of-Payment Survey Report
Cash use is declining while contactless and mobile payments are on the rise.