Building on a unique survey of how Slovak firms adjust wages and prices, this paper studies the extent to which Slovak wages are rigid and the determinants for both nominal and real wage rigidity. Compared to other countries included in the survey, Slovakia has nominal base wage rigidity that is...

Building on a unique survey of how Slovak firms adjust wages and prices, this paper studies the reduction of labour costs in two forms: base wage cuts and alternative margins for labour cost reduction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that wage-cutting by firms occurs more frequently in Slovakia than...

In 2001 the Italian government introduced a personal income tax reform to be implemented in successive phases. In 2004 taxes were reduced to all income levels with higher gains for low-income and high-income individuals than for middle-income ones. A large debate arised. This paper explores the...

We find that survey evidence on faculty pay-cycle choice strongly contradicts the neoclassical theory of consumer behavior. It is more favorable to the behavioral life-cycle theory of Shefrin and Thaler (1988).

We report the results from a representative survey of human resource managers in 885 Swedish firms. We estimate that during the severe recession of the 1990s, only 1.1 percent of workers took a cut in regular nominal pay. We trace the lack of wage moderation to a combination of exogenous...

We analyze survey evidence on individuals' willingness to sanction law violations – such as evading taxes, drunk driving and fare dodging – by disapproval or social exclusion. Our data show that people condition their willingness to sanction a norm violation on their belief about its...

We examine the capital structure policies of Korean firms using survey data for business group <i>(chaebol)</i> firms and independent firms. Our results are compared with findings in earlier studies for developed economies: Graham and Harvey (2001) for the United States and Brounen et al. (2004, 2006)...

This paper explores firms’ wage adjustment practices in the Colombian formal labor market; specifically, the timing and frequency of wage increases, as well as the link between wage and price changes. We use a survey of 1,305 firms belonging to all economic sectors. The results show that most...

Sovereign risk premia in several euro area countries have risen markedly since 2008, driving up credit spreads in the private sector as well. We propose a New Keynesian model of a two-region monetary union that accounts for this “sovereign risk channel.” The model is calibrated to the euro...

In this dissertation, I investigate three related topics on asset pricing: the consumption-based asset pricing under long-run risks and fat tails, the pricing of VIX (CBOE Volatility Index) options and the market price of risk embedded in stock returns and stock options. These three topics are...