In this paper we treat an individual’s health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual’s health sheds new...

A large literature on ex ante moral hazard in income insurance emphasizes that the individual can affect the probability of an income loss by choice of lifestyle and hence, the degree of risk-taking. The much smaller literature on moral hazard ex post mainly analyzes how a “moral hazard...

We develop a simple yet realistic model of income insurance, where the individual’s ability and willingness to work is treated as a continuous variable. In this framework, income insurance not only provides income smoothing, it also relieves the individual from particularly burdensome work. As...

Value Based Management (VBM) has become a common tool for ex ante and ex post evaluation of corporate strategies and projects from the perspective of shareholder value maximization (SVM). VBM-frameworks are designed to support investment and divestment decisions, ex post evaluation of management...

Although private equity firms are often criticized for layoffs, little evidence exists regarding which employees lose their jobs and why. We argue that explanations for the job polarization process can also explain layoffs after buyouts. Buyouts reduce agency problems, which triggers automation,...

Taxation theory rarely takes entrepreneurship into consideration. We discuss how this omission affects conclusions derived from standard models of capital taxation when applied to entrepreneurial income. Some of the defining features of entrepreneurship often omitted by standard capital taxation...

We use a survey to identify a consumer bias with regard to different sources of debt-financing. Less salient debt may generate psychological benefits. This should be weighed against the possible economic costs of a sub-optimal capital structure; but low levels of financial literacy make it...

Using linked employer-employee data from Sweden, a difference-in-difference approach, and 201 private equity buyouts undertaken between 1998 and 2004, we show that unemployment risk declines and labor income increases for employees in the wake of a private equity buyout. Unemployment risk...

This paper makes use of individual data for 2004 to 2008 on owners of closely-held businesses in Sweden to estimate the role of both tax and non-tax determinants in the choice to be a closely-held corporation vs. a proprietorship. While lower-income individuals face relatively neutral...

This chapter focuses on the role of corporate financial strategies to improve firms’ market valuations, and thus lower their cost of capital. The identification of successful strategies is accomplished within an overall strategic framework and related to how the firm perceives the degree of...