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About
David de Meza is the Eric Sosnow Professor of Management in the LSE Department of Management. His research interests include the property rights theory of the firm, optimism and entrepreneurship, and finance and insurance gaps in theory and practice.
Selected publications
de Meza, D. & Webb, D. C. (1987) Too much investment: a problem of asymmetric information. Quarterly Journal of Economics
de Meza, D. & Gould, J. R. (1992) The social efficiency of private decisions to enforce property rights. Journal of Political Economy
de Meza, D. & Southey, C. (1996) The borrower's curse: optimism, finance and entrepreneurship. The Economic Journal
de Meza, D. & Lockwood, B. (1998) Does asset ownership always motivate managers? Outside options and the property rights theory of the firm. Quarterly Journal of Economics
de Meza, D. & Webb, D. C. (2001) Advantageous selection in insurance markets. RAND Journal of Economics
de Meza, D. & Webb, D. C. (2017) False diagnoses: pitfalls of testing for asymmetric information in insurance markets. The Economic Journal
de Meza, D., Dawson, C., Henley, A.G., & Arabsheibani, G. (2019) Curb your enthusiasm: Optimistic entrepreneurs earn less. European Economic Review
Recent publications
de Meza, D. & Reito, F. (2020) Too much waste, not enough rationing: The failure of stochastic, competitive markets. Journal of Economic Theory
de Meza, D. & Dawson, C. (2020) Neither an optimist nor a pessimist Be: Mistaken expectations lower well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
de Meza, D. & Pathania, V. (2021) Is the second-cheapest wine a rip-off? Economics Letters
de Meza, D. & Reito, F. (2021) Macro shocks cause equilibrium price dispersion Economics Letters
de Meza, D., Reito, F. & Reyniers, D. (2021) Too much trade: The hidden problem of adverse selection Journal of Public Economics
de Meza, D. & Reyniers, D. (2023) Insuring Replaceable Possessions, Economica
Dawson, C. & de Meza, D. (2026) Talking the talk, not walking the walk: The co-evolution of overconfidence and loss aversion The Psychological Review