This is an Invited paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and "standard" economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can provide useful arguments and insights in a...

Collusion and soft budget constraint are two conspicuous phenomena in transition economies¡¯ banking system. Literature has separately investigated those two phenomena from theoretical point of views. However, the cross-point of both phenomena has been neglected in the research of banking...

In this paper the author exposes an aproximation to what voluntary agreements as liberal mechanism of environmental policy constitute. He studies the environmental policy elements that take account for the elimination of State intervention in environmental policy for a managerial voluntary...

The identification is made of those conditions by which it is possible to generate synergy or mutually enforcing relations between economic development and environment conservation with the perspective of a systems entropy flow limits. Monetary and fiscal policies are the framework of structural...

How should judges interpret statutes? Like many others, we begin with the premise that statutory interpretation is a quest by judges to use the best available theory and information to determine “what statutes mean.” When seen in this light, two attributes of statutes merit attention. ·...

The paper contrasts Lipset’s modernization hypothesis and Przeworski- Limongi hypothesis that entries into democracy are random with respect to income. We use data on income and democracy going back to 1820, multiple definitions of democracy, and non-parametric testing focusing on the...

Punitive damages are one of the most controversial aspects of tort litigation and have been the subject of various theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies. One criticism of punitive damages refers to the effect that they have on civil litigation processes. In particular, Polinsky (1997)...

Some thoughtful questions and linear answers to the economic, social, and political consequencs that comes with restrictive regulating laws. 'Regulatory law is where Socialism meets Liberalism; or what might be called the highest form of Liberalism, the lowest form of Socialism.'

In this article, we provide an interpretation for the voluntary independence requirements contained in the Italian Corporate Governance Code (Preda Code) checking them against a proxy for international best practice, the independence criteria provided in the EC Recommendation on non-executive...