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...

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...

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...

Recent cases in the US (Meritor, Eisai) and in the EU (Intel ) have revived the debate on the use of price-cost tests in loyalty discount cases. We draw on existing recent economic theories of exclusion and develop new formal material to argue that economics alone does not justify applying a...

We study a specific model of competing manufacturer-retailer pairs where adverse selection and moral hazard are coupled with non-market externalities at the downstream level. In this simple framework we show that a “laissez- faire" approach towards vertical price control might harm consumers...

We explore the strategic value of quantity forcing contracts in a competing manufacturer-retailer hierarchies environment under both adverse selection and moral hazard. Manufacturers dealing with (exclusive) competing retailers may prefer to leave contracts silent on retail prices, whenever...

If management has high private benefits and owns a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies against a takeover threat. Two forces are at play. First, managers can transform employees into a "shark repellent" through long-term labor contracts and thereby reduce the firm's...

The smuggling cost of an imported illegal good decreases as the volume of legally imported goods increases. First because more imports are typically associated to an increased number of transporters, which is an increased supply of potential smugglers. Second because, as the number of shipments...

We analyze the political determinants of investor and employment protection. Our model predicts that proportional electoral systems are conducive to weaker investor protection and stronger employment protection than majoritarian systems. This prediction is consistent with international panel...