This paper studies the design of law-making and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure, defined as the socialwelfare loss that results from the regime's inability to...

This paper studies corporate risk management in a context with financial constraints and imperfect competition on the product market. We show that the interactions between firms heavily affect their hedging demand. As a general rule, the firms’ hedging demand decreases with the correlation...

We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of a multi-asset market with stochastic volatility and transaction costs. Our key assumption is that investors are fund managers, subject to withdrawals when fund performance falls below a threshold. This generates a preference for liquidity that is...

This paper is intended to make a contribution to the empirical literature explaining the rise of unemployment since the 1970s in western economies by means of interactions between shocks and institutions. The contribution is twofold. First, the impact of a general feature of developed economies...

Entry regulations against big-box retailers have been introduced in many countries to protect smaller independent stores. Using a new dataset from the UK, I show that in fact these entry regulations have been associated with greater employment declines in independent stores they were meant to...

Previous studies of smoking risk beliefs have focused almost exclusively on risks to the smoker. Using an original set of survey data from Spain, we examine the public’s perceived risks from exposures to environmental tobacco smoke. The risk categories considered included lung cancer, heart...

This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian States has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act are associated with lowered investment, employment, productivity and output...

This paper aims at providing a conceptual distinction between banking and insurance with regard to systemic regulation. It discusses key differences and similarities as to how both sectors interact with the financial system. Insurers interact as financial intermediaries and through financial...

This article estimates the effect of visa restrictions on bilateral trade flows and foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks. By raising the costs of travel and deterring some visitors, visa restrictions hamper personal contact across borders, which is detrimental to trade and FDI. Employing a...

This paper provides a survey of results on the quantiles of a Brownian motion with drift as well as a general Lévy process. The motivation is to calculate the price of related financial options. At the end of the paper some new results on variability orderings between various quantities...