Although many developing countries have experienced an increase in the relative demand for skilled workers leading to a rise in wage inequality, the role played by trade in this trend remains a matter of debate. Using a firm-level database covering manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors in...

Democratic Republic of Congo has known dramatic events for the last three decades. Statistical social economic data did not exist really or not available in the period. The Informal Sector survey, the second phase of the 1-2-3 survey, carried out in 2004-2005 and conducted by the National...

There is growing evidence that social pressure shapes firms' behavior. Given how sensitive communities are to downsizing, this suggests that firms are likely to be under strong social pressure when considering reducing employment. Using French linked employer-employee data, we show that social...

Mutual funds industry has been sought by French politicians as mediation between the popular savings and company’s investments through the financial markets. Questioning the link between finance and industry requires analyzing the effectiveness of this mediation. This article intends firstly...

The possible existence of a link between the structure of firms' equity and profitability is a recurrent question among economists. The primary objective of this article is to provide a critical analysis of the two most recent hypotheses on the subject, one put forward by Demsetz, and the other...

We investigate the capital structure dynamics of a panel of 766 firms from five Western Europe countries: France, Italy, UK, Germany and Switzerland over the period 1996-2007. If firms adjust their capital structure towards an optimal level with adjustment costs affecting this optimization...

For some years, real estate and finance have become more and more interlinked. The application of the powerful tools developed in finance for this field of knowledge seems promising ; mortgage valuation method developed by Kau, Keenan, Muller, Epperson (1992) being a major example of this. This...

For many centuries, forms of Islamic charity such as zakat (i.e. "obligatory" alms) and waqf (i.e. endowment or philanthropic foundation) have proven to be essential tools for economic and human development. Both of these schemes aim to reduce income inequality and to encourage productive...