We propose a model in which investors cannot costlessly process information from asset prices. At the trading stage, investors are boundedly rational, and their interpretation of prices injects noise into the price, generating a source of endogenous noise trading. Our setup predicts price momentum and yields excessive return volatility and excessive trading volume. In an overall equilibrium, investors optimally choose sophistication levels by balancing the benefit of beating the market against the cost of acquiring sophistication. There can exist strategic complementarity in sophistication acquisition, leading to multiple equilibria.

We assess the consequences for market quality and welfare of different entry regimes and exchange pricing policies. To do so, we integrate a microstructure model with a free-entry, exchange competition model where exchanges have market power in technological services. Free-entry delivers superior liquidity and welfare outcomes vis-a-vis an unregulated monopoly, but entry can be excessive or insufficient. Depending on the extent of the monopolist's technological services undersupply compared to the first best, a planner can achieve a higher welfare controlling entry or platform fees. Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming

We develop a tractable general equilibrium framework in which firms are large and have market power with respect to both products and labor, and in which a firm's decisions are affected by its ownership structure. We characterize the Cournot-Walras equilibrium of an economy where each firm maximizes a share-weighted average of shareholder utilities-rendering the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In a one-sector economy, if returns to scale are non-increasing, then an increase in effective market concentration (which accounts for common ownership) leads to declines in employment, real wages, and the labor share. Yet when there are multiple sectors, due to an intersectoral pecuniary externality, an increase in common ownership could stimulate the economy when the elasticity of labor supply is high relative to the elasticity of substitution in product markets. We characterize for which ownership structures the monopolistically competitive limit or an oligopolistic one is attained as the number of sectors in the economy increases. When firms have heterogeneous constant returns to scale technologies, we find that an increase in common ownership leads to markets that are more concentrated.

We analyze a divisible good uniform-price auction that features two groups, each with a finite number of identical bidders, who compete in demand schedules. In the linear-quadratic-normal framework, this paper presents conditions under which the unique equilibrium in linear demands exists and derives novel comparative statics results that highlight the interaction between payoff and information parameters with asymmetric groups. We find that the strategic complementarity in the slopes of traders' demands is reinforced by inference effects from prices, and we display the role of payoff and information asymmetries in explaining deadweight losses. Furthermore, price impact and the deadweight loss need not move together, and market integration may reduce welfare. The results are consistent with the available empirical evidence.

I examine the effects of overlapping ownership on market power when there are external effects across firms. This is done in an oligopoly model with cost-reducing innovation with technological spillovers where firms have an overlapping ownership structure based largely on Lopez and Vives (2019). The model allows for Cournot competition with homogeneous product and for Bertrand with differentiated products as well as for strategic effects of R&D investment. It derives positive testable implications and normative results to inform policy. (C) 2019 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V.

We examine the evolution of competition in banking in the EU in its interaction with regulatory developments and the parallel evolution of the application of competition policy in the sector. The crisis of 2007-2009 interrupted the normalization of competition policy in banking that started in the early 1980s; the crisis also reversed some advances in competitive pressure that had occurred due to market integration and the introduction of the euro. Competition policy has to cope post-crisis with a sector that is systemic and subject to regulatory failure. There is ample room to improve both competition and stability in banking by refining regulation.

Competition has been suppressed for extended periods in banking and when it has been unleashed, financial stability has suffered. This paper elucidates the relationship between competition and stability in modern banking, with particular attention to the impact of digital technologies, and derives the policy consequences for regulation and competition policy. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A model is presented of a uniform price auction where bidders compete in demand schedules; the model allows for common and private values in the absence of exogenous noise. It is shown how private information yields more market power than the levels seen with full information. Results obtained here are broadly consistent with evidence from asset auctions, may help explain the response of central banks to the crisis, and suggest potential improvements in the auction formats of asset auctions

This volume contains the proceedings of the Armand Carabén Workshop on Football Economics, which was held on the premises of IESE on November 24, 2009. The event, co-sponsored by FC Barcelona and the Public-Private Sector Research Center, was meant as a tribute to Armand Carabén, who was the managing director of FC Barcelona between 1970 and 1973, and who is widely regarded as the "father of modern Barça." The opening remarks by the President of FCB, Mr. Joan Laporta, and by Mr. Carabén's son, Armand Carabén Jr., which the reader will find after this prologue, are a clear testimony of the qualities of Armand Carabén as a professional and a human being.

Barcelona must break with its traditional business model - based on cheap labor, imported technology and protected market - and correct its lack of political and geographical centrality in Spain and Europe, respectively. To achieve this, it must leverage the capacities of the surrounding areas and promote connecting routes with France, as well as supporting innovative projects, as it has already done with the 22@ technology district.