We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information.

Recent advances in telecommunications, particularly using fibre technologies, permit many services based on data-processing to be performed anywhere in the world. They thus become tradable and subject to the laws of comparative advantage. A good example is data-processing within large...

Performance-based regulation (PBR) is influenced by the Bayesian and non-Bayesian incentive mechanisms. While Bayesian incentives are impractical, the insights from their properties can be combined with practical non-Bayesian mechanisms for application to transmission pricing. This combination...

Most contracts that individuals enter into are not written from scratch; rather, they depend upon forms and terms that have been successful in the past. In this paper, we study the structure of form construction contracts published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We show that...

EU Merger Control Regulation No 4064/89 tended to rely on a dominance test, based on the market share of undertakings, to indicate the level and potential changes in market power. The use of such in differentiated product industries is questionable. New EC Merger Regulation No 139/2004...

We analyze a model where firms chose a production technology which, together with some random event, determines the final emission level. We consider the coexistence of two alternative technologies: a "clean" technology, and a "dirty" technology. The environmental regulation is based on taxes...

We focus in this paper on the effects of court errors on the optimal sharing of liability between firms and financiers, as an environmental policy instrument. Using a structural model of the interactions between firms, financial institutions, governments and courts we show, through numerical...

We construct a panel of satisfaction with democracy (SWD) and economic, institutional, and environmental variables for 1990-2001 for fifteen European countries. In this sample, controlling for a number of factors, we find that average SWD is higher where (1) there exists an energy / CO2 tax,...

Despite remarkable growth during the last decade, Asia and the Pacific still faces extensive basic infrastructure needs. Furthermore, to cope up with the reduced export demand from advanced economies arising out of the ongoing financial crisis, the region needs to enhance its connectivity...

We model consumer choices for cannabis in a risky environment and determine the supply of cannabis under prohibition and legalization. While introducing a legal market reduces the profits of illegal providers, it increases cannabis consumption. We show that this trade-off can be overcome by...