The United States leads the world in the complexity of its regulatory takings law, the amount of academic writing devoted to the topic, and the intensity of the surrounding public debate. This is one of the (ancillary) findings of a large-scale comparative study of regulatory takings law. A look...

This chapter adopts the working assumption that it is conceivable that at some time in the future it would be in the interest of the United States to restructure its sovereign debt (i.e., to reduce the principal amount). It addresses in particular U.S. Treasury Securities. The chapter first...

One of the most distinctive characteristics of the U.S. telephone system is that it has always been privately owned, in stark contrast to the pattern of government ownership followed by virtually every other nation. What is not widely known is how close the United States came to falling in line...

This paper examines the investment and financial decisions of a sample of 92 EU regulated utilities, taking into account key institutional features of EU public utilities, such as: a) regulation by agencies with various degrees of independence; b) partial ownership of the state in the regulated...

We assembled a large panel of project-level technical and financial data and country-level economic, institutional, political, and governance variables to assess the determinants of private financing of infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies. Controlling for economic...

In our article we present the use of hybrid securities in the privatization process. We show that exchangeable bonds may be successfully applied during privatization of state companies throughout the world. It may be profitable for many reasons. Firstly, the exchangeables offer a much lower...

Recent concessions in France and in the US have resulted in a dramatic difference in the valuation placed on the toll roads; the price paid by the investors in France was twelve times current cash flow whereas investors paid sixty times current cash flow for the U.S. toll roads. In this paper we...

During President Obama's administration, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared to over 14.5 million – a 215% increase since 2007. Among the findings of our report:■ The increase in the number of concealed handgun permits last year set another record, increasing by 1.73 million....

U.S. network industry reforms led other countries in the past, but have recently run into difficulties in specific areas. In particular, the U.S. telecommunications sector was hit by a deep crisis and electricity reforms suffered under the California disaster. Part of the explanation for these...

This article provides a comprehensive assessment of private firms' financing sources and their relation with financial reporting practices. We consider debt financing (bank financing, leasing, and government guarantees), equity financing (family ownership, government ownership, employee...