Measures aimed at reducing the tax burden on labour have been advocated to alleviate the EU unemployment problem. Most of the analyses document a relationship between the unemployment rate and the tax burden on labour. Hence, it is not possible to discern whether the effect on unemployment...

Interfirm late payments are a hot issue in the EU, as witnessed by the 1998 bills passed in Italy and in the U.K. and by the soon to be approved EU Directive. Comprehensive information, especially on the effective own cost, is however almost absent in the literature. The paper provides the first...

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the nature of long-term liquidity contracts that arise between lenders and borrowers in the absence of perfect enforceability and when both parties are financially constrained. We study an infinite horizon dynamic contracting model between a borrower and...

This paper analyzes sequential games of double-sided Bertrand competition in the deposit and credit markets, when banks are free to reject customers and cannot distinguish among borrowers. The timing of competition is crucial when customers apply once. Interest rates are pushed upwards when the...

This paper presents an overlapping generations model with technology choice and credit market imperfections, in order to investigate a possible source of underdevelopment. The model shows that a better financial infrastructure that provides stronger enforcement of contracts facilitates the...

Some empirical investigations are pointing to the fact that high-tech firms are subject to credit rationing to a higher extent than the average. This excess of credit rationing may not be due to information asymmetries, but rather to the inability of credit institutions to screen projects in...

This paper examines the relationship between debt contract and the process of resolving financial distress, through either debt restructuring or bankruptcy procedure. It effectively justifies the popularity of the standard debt contract by demonstrating that the standard debt contract is the...

The renaissance of capital-based macroeconomics belongs to the most significant scholarly developments within the field of macroeconomics in recent times. This paper was a contribution to the special 2001 symposium devoted to a critical evaluation and analysis of the recent revival of...

This paper is the sequel to chapter 30 of the 1999 first edition of The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics (ed. J. Backhaus). A new section has been added entitled 'An application of Hayekian law and economics: the comparative analysis of alternative monetary and banking regimes'.

The analogy between Hayekian monetary dynamics and the Friedman/Phelps accelerationist hypothesis is more problematic than some commentators have been prepared to admit. Hayek´s presentation of the 1930s did not produce a convincing argument in defense of the proposition that accelerating...