Data on the net sources of finance for France are used to argue that the French financial system was never an economie d'endettement, and to question the idea that France has converged on the Anglo-Saxon model under the impact of financial innovation and deregulation since the early 1980s. These...

New data on the sources of finance for the nonfinancial corporate sector show that Italian firms as a whole use more equity finance than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, and smaller Italian firms use equity more intensively than larger firms. Both findings can be understood in terms of the...

A 'new version' of the gravity model is used to estimate the effect of a full range of de facto exchange rate regimes on bilateral trade. The results indicate that, while participation in a common currency union is typically strongly 'pro-trade', other exchange rate regimes which lower the...