The determinants of investment behaviour are essentially preferences, endowments, production possibilities and institutions. While there is a vast literature discussing the effect of different combinations of the latter three dimensions for given preferences, very little research effort has been...

Why do lawyers in some jurisdictions continue to ‘automatically’ exclude the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in their choices of law for international sales contracts? Why do lawyers in other jurisdictions approach the decision very differently? Why...

The discounted-utilitarian social welfare function (DU) is used by the great majority of researchers studying intergenerational resource allocation in the presence of climate change (e.g., W. Nordhaus, M. Weitzman, N. Stern, and P. Dasgupta). I present three justifications for using DU: (1) the...

This paper provides an extension to the literature on gender differences in preferences by analyzing the international distribution of gender differences in preferences and their determinants with an economical approach. Based on the INTRA survey the international distribution of gender...

We study the impacts of local gender imbalance on corporate risk-taking. We find that firms in areas with higher local male-female ratios have higher stock volatilities and leverage, less corporate hedging, and more capital expenditures. Consequently, such firms face higher loan spreads and more...

We present results from the first large-scale international survey on risk preferences, conducted in 45 countries. We show substantial cross-country differences in risk aversion, loss aversion and probability weighting. Moreover, risk attitudes in our sample depend not only on economic...

In this paper, we introduce our GDSGE framework and MATLAB toolbox for solving dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with a novel global solution method. The framework encompasses many well-known incomplete markets models with highly nonlinear dynamics such as models on financial crises,...

Qatar and Dubai have established financial centres which have been based upon the common law jurisdiction of England and Wales because of the advantages such a system can give to the development of their respective financial services industries. The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) and the Dubai...

Using the extended Ramsey rule, the socially efficient rate is the difference between a wealth effect and a precautionary effect of economic growth. This second effect is increasing in the degree of uncertainty affecting the future. In the literature, it is usually calibrated by estimating the...

We examine the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary co- operation and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field public goods experiment with...