Different investor classes are endowed with different rights, and conflicting interests among them can make protections afforded to one party detrimental to another. Indeed, we find that investor protection laws have sizeable "cross" effects on foreign portfolio investment and the direction of...

We examine how the legal protection of outside shareholders and the appropriative costs that they induce influence the incentives for private firms to go public. A higher degree of protection of shareholders can increase the appropriative costs associated with the conflict between managers and...

We consider a mean-variance general equilibrium economy where the expected returns for controlling and non-controlling shareholders are different because the former are able to divert a fraction of the profits. We find that when investor protection is poor, asset return correlation affects...

During the past decade, equity crowdfunding (ECF) has emerged as an alternative funding channel for startup firms. In Germany, the Small Investor Protection Act became binding in July 2015, with the legislative goal to protect investors engaging in this new asset class. Since then, investors...

Chinese currency policy has had a strong impact on the value of investors' portfolios in recent years. On August 11, 2015, the People's Bank of China announced a new exchange rate policy where the RMB central parity rate against the USD would be determined each morning by the previous day's...

Excessive preoccupation for self-image has been pointed out as an essential factor explaining food disorders. This paper draws upon Akerlof and Kranton (2000) to model how "self-image" and others' appearances influence health related behaviours. We estimate the influence of "peers' image" on the...

In European Welfare States, low-skilled workers are typically unionized, while the wage formation of high-skilled workers is more competitive. To focus on this aspect, we analyze how flexible international outsourcing and labour taxation affect wage formation, employment and welfare in dual...

We reassess the driving forces behind the recent decline of corporate tax rates in Europe. Using data for up to 32 countries from 1983 to 2006, we analyze the role of economic and financial openness as well as tax competition while allowing for dynamic adjustment to shocks and period-specific as...

This paper explores empirically the link between French equities returns Value-at-Risk (VaR) and the state of financial markets cycle. The econometric analysis is based on a simple vector autoregression setup. Using quarterly data from 1970Q4 to 2008Q3, it turns out that the k-year VaR of French...