Sunk firing costs shelter employment – and this effect is typically amplified by uncertainty due to an option value of waiting. Thus, if sunk firing costs are high, e.g. due to a employment protection legislation, and if recession related losses are with a high probability expected to be only...

This paper proposes a new perspective on international capital flows and countries' long-run external asset position. Cross-sectional evidence for 84 developing countries shows that over the last three decades countries that have had on average higher volatility of output growth (1) accumulated...

The implementation of European Union directives into national law is at the discretion of member states. We analyze incentives for member states to deviate from these directives when the European Commission may sue a defecting member state and rulings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are...

Innovations can be important means to the achievement of improved sustainability. Due to path dependencies, however, the transition from an existing technological trajectory to a more sustainable one is often impeded by significant barriers. These barriers themselves are subject to substantial...

When enacting labor market regulation governments face courts that interpret and implement the legal code. We show that the incentives for governments for labor market reform increase with the uncertainty that is involved in the implementation of legal codes through courts. Given that judges...