The paper seeks to explain the huge cross country variation in private pension funding,shaped by historical choice made when universal pension systems were created after theGreat Depression. According to Perotti and von Thadden (2006), large inflationaryshocks due to war damage devastated middle...

We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

In this paper we develop a theoretical model to investigate the effect on a bank's financial stability of having multiple contingent convertible bonds buffers (CoCos) on the same bank balance sheet, using cash-in-the-market pricing and global games methodologies. Contingent convertible bonds are...

We argue in favour of the shareholder model of the firm for three main reasons. First, serving multiple stakeholders leads to ill-defined property rights. What sounds like a fair compromise between stakeholders can easily evolve in a permanent struggle between the stakeholders about the ultimate...

We argue that the recent corporate governance reform in the Netherlands provides a natural experiment to explore the impact of changes in corporate governance on financing policy. We find that, relative to a control sample of comparable firms outside the Netherlands, Dutch firms significantly...

We allow the preference of a political majority to determine boththe corporate governance structure and the division of profits betweenhuman and financial capital. In a democratic society where financialwealth is concentrated, a political majority may prefer to restraingovernance by dispersed...

To achieve sustainable economic growth in the transition countries,it is crucial that enterprise performance is improved. However, it isnot clear which factors are essential for this. On the basis of theempirical literature on potential determinants of enterpriseperformance in Russia, surveyed...

To achieve sustainable economic growth in transition countries, it is crucial that enterpriseperformance is improved. However, it is not a priori clear which factors are essential for this. ForRussia, data to investigate the potential determinants of enterprise performance is scarce.Therefore,...