In 1908, Vinzenz Bronzin, a professor of mathematics at the Accademia di Commercio e Nauticain Trieste, published a booklet in German entitled Theorie der Prämiengeschäfte (Theory ofPremium Contracts) which is an old type of option contract. Almost like Bachelierÿs now famousdissertation...

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? Inorder to answer this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit andPindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-membership. We develop a simplified model of twoperiods to study how the value of waiting...