In many European countries, the deregulation of energy markets leading to the introduction of unbundling and incentive regulation for utilities firms has made the task of setting an adequate cost of equity more difficult. Firstly, Legal Unbundling led to the creation of many legally independent...

We find that Japanese firms that barely met a voluntary minimum pre-COVID-19 regulation (minimal compliers) lost more firm value than others due to COVID-19. We consider the corporate governance code introduced in 2015. It requires that firms have at least two outside directors on a...

This essay, based on the author's presentation last September to the annual meeting of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA), addresses several issues related to Rule 506, the most widely-used of the SEC's transactional exemptions from federal registration of...

Economic theory states that “free market” competition naturally achieves lower prices—thereby increasing efficiency and benefiting society. This is the first paper in the literature to use means testing to statistically analyze electricity prices, from 1970-2011, for states that...

We construct measures of firms' beliefs about climate regulation, plans for future abatement, and current actions on emissions mitigation, using Carbon Disclosure Project data. These measures vary significantly around the Paris climate change agreement announcement. A dynamic model of a...

An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Supervisors forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes. But stricter supervision could also change how banks assess and manage...

The recent emergence of SWFs as active and important players in international financial markets has raised a host of questions about their likely effect on markets and states. This trend is further reinforced in 2010/2011 by the fact that despite the fears and turbulences that spread all over...

State enterprises (SEs) have been increasingly competing with private firms in international markets, in terms of both cross-border trade and FDI. Given both the potentially positive contribution internationally trading and investing SEs can make, as well as the concerns raised about their...

Since the onset of the current crisis, numerous intergovernmental organizations made declarations and plans, but only national packages were implemented to minimize adverse effects to real (national) economies. Despite the fact that capital markets have long ago become increasingly complex with...

In this article we analyse the effects of different regulatory schemes (price cap and profit sharing) on a firm's investment of endogenous size. Using a real option approach in continuous time, we show that profit sharing does not affect a firm's start-up decision relative to a pure price cap...