We analyze how the law and its enforcement affect equity market equilibrium. Improvements in the legal system, while invariably associated with broader equity markets, have different effects on equity returns depending on the institutional change considered and on the degree of international...

This paper presents a political economy model where there is mutual feedback between investor protection and stock market development. Better investor protection induces companies to issue more equity and thereby leads to a broader stock market. In turn, equity issuance expands the shareholder...

Multiple bank lending creates an incentive to overborrow and default. When creditor rights are poorly protected and collateral value is volatile, this incentive leads to rationing and non-competitive interest rates. If banks share information about past debts via credit reporting systems, the...

How does the punishment for default affect repayment behavior? We use administrative data provided by the leading Italian lender of unsecured credit to the household sector to investigate the effect of two potentially important factors: judicial efficiency and the availability of informal credit...

If the private benefits of control are high and management owns a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies. There are two forces at play. First, managers effectively transform employees into a “poison pill’’ by signing generous long-term labor contracts and thereby...

When the government provides public services necessary to production tax evasion results in some degree of income redistribution which may imply an higher or a lower level of aggregate income in the longrun. The outcome mainly depends on the burden of …scal pressure. If the tax administration...

We analyze the effects of judicial errors on the innovative activity of firms. Successful research investment allows to take a new action that may be ex-post welfare enhancing or welfare decreasing (illegal). Deterrence in this setting works by affecting both the incentives to invest in research...

Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Since enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per-capita income and decreasing in officials’ corruption. In...

We model an enforcement problem where firms can take a known and lawful action or seek a profitable innovation that may enhance or reduce welfare. The legislator sets fines calibrated to the harmfulness of unlawful actions. The range of fines defines norm flexibility. Expected sanctions guide...

We analyze optimal policy design when firms' research activity may lead to socially harmful innovations. Public intervention, affecting the expected profitability of innovation, may both thwart the incentives to undertake research (average deterrence) and guide the use to which innovation is put...