Using a household production model of educational choices, we characterise a free market situation in which some agents (high wagers) educate their children full-time and spend a sizable amount of resources on them, while others (low wagers) educate them only partially. The free-market...

In this paper, we analyse tax harmonisation in the framework of two asymmetric countries, differing with respect to their capital-labour endowments. In the first part, we analyse how national fiscal policies are decided when countries play a non-cooperative game. At the Nash equilibrium,...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

We examine the second-best family policy under the assumption that both the number and the future earning capacities of the children born to a couple are random variables with probability distributions conditional on unobservable parental actions. Potential parents take their decisions without...

We analyze the optimal ownership, delegation and compensation structures when a manager is hired to run a firm and to gather information on investment projects. The initial owner has two tasks: monitoring the manager and supervising project choice. Optimality would require a large ownership...

We analyze the voting behavior of a board of directors that has to approve (or reject) an investment proposal with uncertain return. We consider three types of directors: insiders, who are biased toward acceptance of the project, independent outsiders who want to maximize the firm's profit and...

How does the distribution of individual preferences evolve as a result of marriage between individuals with different preferences? Could a family rule be self-enforcing given individual preferences, and remain such for several generations despite preference evolution? We show that it is in a...

We analyze the effects of optimism and overconfidence when the manager's compensation package includes severance pay and the CEO has bargaining power. We find that optimism does not affect incentive pay but increases severance pay with a negative effect on profit. Overconfidence, on the...

Higher education is not just a signal of innate ability. At least a certain level of educational achievement (degree level, degree mark) is strictly required to perform a graduate job. School leavers fall into two categories, the rich and the poor. Ability is distributed in the same way in both...

The paper analyzes the optimal structure of board of directors in a firm with ownership concentrated in the hands of a large shareholder who sits on the board. We focus our attention on the choice between one-tier board who performs all tasks and two-tier board where the management board is in...