infonet-economy

According to economic theory, repeated interactions can play a crucial role in shaping trust. We randomly allocated people to treatments that promote interactions with bankers. Next, these people play incentivised trust games with their own banker and with an anonymous other banker. While the effect on trust in the own banker is limited, the impact on trust in other bankers is...

During the European sovereign debt crisis of 2011-13, some nations faced with rising borrowing costs adopted commitments to treat bondholders as priority claimants. That is, if there was a shortage of funds, bondholders would be paid first. In this article, we analyze the prevalence and variety of these types of commitments and ask whether they impact borrowing costs. We examine a...

When do parties introduce novel clauses to a system of contracts or treaties? While important research has investigated how clauses diffuse once introduced, few empirical studies address their initial introduction. Drawing on network theory, this paper argues that novel clauses are introduced when agreements are concluded in certain structures of earlier agreements and the clauses...

Small companies need help to detect and to respond to increasing security related threats. This paper presents a cloud service that automates processes that make checks for such threats, implement mitigating procedures, and generally instructs client companies on the steps to take. For instance, a process that automates the search for leaked credentials on the Dark Web will, in the...

We consider the drivers and implications of the growth of "BigTech" in finance – ie the financial services offerings of technology companies with established presence in the market for digital services. BigTech firms often start with payments. Thereafter, some expand into the provision of credit, insurance and money management products, either directly or in cooperation with...

Globalization and robotics (globotics) are transforming the world economy at an explosive pace. While much of the literature has focused on rich nations, the changes are quite likely to affect developing nations in important ways. The premise of the paper - which should be regarded as a thought-piece - is based on an extreme thought experiment. What does development look like when...