In the presence of asymmetric information, the stage at which financing decisions are made about investment projects in a small open economy is crucial for the composition of international capital inflows as well as for the efficiency of channeling savings into investment. This paper compares...

This paper is an investigation into the determinants of asymmetries in stock returns. We develop a series of cross-sectional regression specifications which attempt to forecast skewness in the daily returns of individual stocks. Negative skewness is most pronounced in stocks that have...

In contrast to recent literature, we show that market access requirements (MARs) can be implemented in a procompetitive manner even in the absence of threats in related markets. By focusing on subsidies that are paid only when the requirement is met, we show that a MAR can increase aggregate...

Why are higher quality niches seen as intrinsically more profitable in business circles? Why do high quality products sometimes have a low real price, while it is unusual to see low quality products with high real prices? Can markets have quality differentiation as well as quality bunching? In...

In Razin, Sadka and Yuen (1998, 1999a), we explored the policy implications of the home-bias in international portfolio investment as a result of asymmetric information problems in which domestic savers, being 'close' to the domestic market, have an informational advantage over foreign portfolio...

In a static setup, migration of unskilled labor may be resisted by the entire native-born population because, being relatively low earners, migrants are net beneficiaries of the fiscal system. However, the paper shows that with a pay-as-you-go pension, an important pillar of the welfare state,...

This paper addresses the following question: what ties together the traditional commercial banking activities of deposit-taking and lending? We begin by observing that since banks often lend via commitments, or credit lines, their lending and deposit-taking may be two manifestations of the same...