We study what type of entrepreneurs are affected by financial constraints. Our identification strategy exploits age-based discontinuities in the amount of funding available through a public program for unemployed workers. We find that access to funding increases the rate of entrepreneurship. The...

We study what type of entrepreneurs are affected by financial constraints by exploiting age-based discontinuities in the amount of funding available through a public program for unemployed workers. Our sample links administrative data on 2.1 million eligible workers to the firms they create,...

The attention for the governance of financial sector supervisors is of a recent date. The debate has risen to the fore as part of the wider discussion about the appropriate institutional organization of financial supervision and the drive for compliance with international best practices in the...

Since the financial crisis, attention has focused on central counterparties (CCPs) as a solution to systemic risk for a variety of financial markets, ranging from repurchase agreements and options to swaps. However, internationally accepted standards and the academic literature have left...

We study a model where some investors ("hedgers") are bad at information processing, while others ("speculators") have superior information-processing ability and trade purely to exploit it. The disclosure of financial information induces a trade externality: if speculators refrain from trading,...

Financial development is good for long term growth. So why doesn't every country pursue policies that render full financial development? In this paper, building on a profuse political economy literature, we build a theoretical model that shows that the intensity of opposition by incumbents...

At a time of such great turbulence, looking to the future directions of capital markets and their regulation in developed economies is a particularly risky business. We are in the midst of a great sea change.Nevertheless, there are several current, and readily observable, phenomena which are...

While the paper touches upon the experience of most transition economies in Eastern and Central Europe, it focuses on the creation and functioning of capital market development in four countries in the region, namely, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Capital market in these four...

How we think about financial markets determines how we regulate them. Since the 1970s modern finance theory has shaped how we think about and regulate financial markets. It is based on the notion that markets are or can be made (more) efficient. Financial markets have been deregulated when they...