In the last decade the ownership structure of Australia's life insurance industry has undergone a fundamental change. Traditionally, the sector had been dominated by a group of large mutual associations which had historically been the market leaders. In the space of less than a decade, this form...

We analyze the regulation of a single health care provider (e.g. a hospital). According to several payment rules used in different countries, we consider a mixed linear payment in which the hospital is paid a fixed price per DRG (diagnosis related group) for most patients (inlier patients) and...

Using a substitution property of worker’s types (productivity and time preference), we propose an explanation for both fixed-wages and wage differentials. Fixed-wages result in bunching at the optimum. Equally productive workers with different time preference accept different wages.

The financing of innovation impacts on economic growth. What’s, among bank-based or market-based system, the best organizational form? The paper supports the view that both forms have to be merged into a unique approach (law and finance view) embracing not only the overall quality of the...

Given that young children are under the control of their parents, if the government has a interest in either the welfare or the productivity of the former, it has no option but to act through the latter,. Parents are, in the ordynary sense....

This paper is about freedom of choice and rigidity of choice rules as incentive devices. We study the optimal design of an agent's freedom of choice when his information is endogenous and costly to acquire. We show that curtailing the agent's authority over decision-making may be optimal even if...

This paper is about freedom of choice and rigidity of choice rules as incentive devices. We study the optimal design of an agent's freedom of choice when his information is endogenous and costly to acquire. We show that curtailing the agent's authority over decision-making may be optimal even if...

The 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström for their work on contract theory. Contract theory is a subfield of game theory where the conflict between the owner - the principal - and the CEO - or agent - is at the centre of interest. In the...

The paper provides evidence on what affects at the margin the cost and availability of bank credit for firms in Argentina. We study in particular how banks use different pieces of private and public information to screen firms and overcome informational asymmetries in the credit market. Some...

The 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström for their work on contract theory. Contract theory is a subfield of game theory where the conflict between the owner - the principal - and the CEO - or agent - is at the centre of interest. In the...