We compare the effect of legal and institutional competition for the design of labor institutions in an environment characterized by holdup problems in human and physical capital. We compare autarky with the two country case, assuming that capital is perfectly mobile and labor immobile. We...

Regulation and competition policy are two alternative modalities by which the state intervenes in the market. In order for either to deliver welfare gains, there must first be a pre-existing market failure. We first present different varieties of market failures and identify those for which...

Nationalstaaten verändern ihre Größe - dies lehrt die Geschichte. Gleichwohl wird die Größe eines Landes in der Ökonomik meist als exogen angenommen und nicht erklärt. Dies überrascht, weil die Staatsgröße in gewissem Umfang als Ergebnis rationaler Entscheidungen und als genuin...

The aim of this paper is to quantify the role of formal-sector institutions in shaping the demand for human capital and the level of informality. We propose a firm dynamics model where firms face capital market imperfections and costs of operating in the formal sector. Formal firms have a larger...

Are efficiency considerations important for understanding differences in the development of institutions? We model institutional quality as the degree to which obligations associated with exchanging capital can be enforced. Establishing a positive level of enforcement requires an aggregate...

The real dynamics of U.S. regulatory competition in corporate law are often misunderstood. As convincingly demonstrated by some authors (Kahan and Kamar), most States are not actively engaged in the market for charters, and Delaware's position is substantially unchallenged. From this starting...

We incorporate arguments from the Tiebout model into the regulatory competition equilibrium and study cross-fertilization in the productivity growth of banks between those in a state and others in this state's neighboring states. Empirically, we focus on two time periods: before (i.e.,...

We examine empirically cross-fertilization in the productivity growth of banks between a state and its neighboring and non-neighboring states before (1971-1977) and during (1982-1995) the interstate multibank holding company (IMBHC) deregulations, upon which, cross-border bank M&As, mainly among...