Producing high technology output and supplying sophisticated services often involves costly investment in industry-specific skills. But the threat of poaching means that it is the individual 'stakeholder,' not the firm, who must bear the cost. The authors investigate various mechanisms for...

Is sovereign borrowing so different from corporate debt that there is no need for bankruptcy-style procedures to protect debtors? With the waiver of immunity, sovereign debtors who already face severe disruption from short-term creditors grabbing their currency reserves are also exposed to...

When the risk premium in the US stock market fell substantially, Shiller (2000) attributed this to a bubble driven by psychological factors. An alternative explanation is that the observed risk premium may be reduced by one-sided intervention policy on the part of the Federal Reserve which leads...

The author uses an investment model of oil development to show how a fiscal regime can be both neutral with respect to development decisions and efficient in recouping economic rents. The author finds that there is a unique rate for calculating the tax deductibility of capital costs which...

Using a variant of the Cagan (1956) model with rational expectations, this paper shows that expected stabilization can result in a budget deficit in excess of the maximum inflation tax. A cap on the deficit dampens inflation expectations and raises real balances, thus increasing the yield of the...

The theory of irreversible investment predicts that development of an oil field should take place when a unique 'price trigger' is passed. At the start of the 1990/91 Gulf War, however, oil prices promptly doubled, only to fall back to their previous level when peace returned six months later....