A widely recognized paper by Colin Mayer (1988) has led to a profound revision of academic thinking about financing patterns of corporations in different countries. Using flow-of-funds data instead of balance sheet data, Mayer and others who followed his lead found that internal financing is the...

This note analyses investment and risk-taking in a simple agency model of public regulation/procurement borrowed from Laffont & Tirole (1993). We show that the principal will overinvest or underinvest depending on whether investment is marginally more productive in bad or in good states. Due to...

In monetary economics it is argued that due to agency cost in financial contracting a reduction of a firm's net worth will transmit into a decline of investment. This paper shows that the microeconomic foundation of this 'balance-sheet-channel' is dubious. Contrary to a common claim agency...

The basis of Germany´s technological competitiveness continues to be a good one. In the nineties, however, the investments to maintain this position have left much to be desired. The most recent efforts in investments, in research and development and patenting activities are found to be...

Recent increases in Iowa farmland values and the turbulence in the stock market have resurrected a perennial question. Which is a better investment - the stock market or farmland?[...]

What determines the firm's choice of its mechanism of investment financing? How is the choice of the firm's financing mechanism at the micro level related to the economy's business cycle movements at the aggregate level? This paper develops a model of the credit market where the equilibrium...

In enhanced annuities, the annuity payment depends on one's state ofhealth at some contracted date while in "standard annuities", it does not.The focus of this paper is on an annuity market where "standard" and en-hanced annuities are oered simultaneously. When all insured know equallywell on...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipi-ent’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option whenchoosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While thereare numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing our planet in the foreseeable future anddespite the urgency of the situation global GHG emissions are still increasing. In this context,and since future climate changes appear now unavoidable to some extent, adaptation measureshave recently...