This paper analyses the impact of labour demand and labour market regulations on the corporate structure of fims. It finds that higher wages are associated with lower monitoring, irrespective of whether these high wages are caused by labour market regulations, unions or higher labour demand....

Returns on international equities are characterized by jumps; moreover, these jumps tend to occur at the same time across countries leading to systemic risk .In this Paper, we evaluate whether systemic risk reduces substantially the gains from international diversification. First, in order to...

We provide methods for forecasting variables and predicting turning points in panel Bayesian VARs. We specify a flexible model that accounts for both interdependencies in the cross section and time variations in the parameters. Posterior distributions for the parameters are obtained for...

We provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. To the best of our knowledge, this well-established and important theoretical proposition has not been tested before. Our empirical procedure is summarized as follows. First, we construct a measure of...

We develop a simple model to analyse the ‘dual-track’ approach to transition to a market economy as a mechanism for implementing efficient Pareto-improving economic reform, that is, reform achieving efficiency without creating losers. The approach, based on the continued enforcement of the...

This paper evaluates the effects of liberalizing access to the space sector, as currently envisaged by the EC Commission. We undertake an econometric evaluation of the degree of scale economies in satellite operations and calibrate a Cournot model of competition in which the effect of...

This paper studies the relation between macroeconomic fluctuations and corporate defaults while conditioning on industry affiliation and an extensive set of firm-specific factors. Using a multiperiod logit approach on a panel data set for all incorporated Swedish businesses over 1990-2002, we...

Using a dataset of the firms listed on the Neuer Markt in Germany, this Paper demonstrates that venture backed firms differ from firms with other financial resources, especially debt. Thus, the results of this study provide evidence for the hypothesis that small and innovative firms are more...

We study the effects of a conditional cash transfers program on school enrollment and performance in Mexico. We provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the dynamic educational process including the endogeneity and uncertainty of performance at school (passing grades) and the effect of a...

Budget constraints are drawn up for annual hours and net pay, typically composed of two linear segments: 'benefit-constrained', where extra work forfeits benefit and 'normal', where extra work is subject to the standard marginal tax rate. There are additional linear segments for those on upper...