Over the recent decades, the USA has witnessed major changes in corporate governance partly due to an overall increase in financialization. The most pronounced development is the escalation of management salaries caused by the rise of stock options. On theoretical grounds, this trend was...

In this paper we present a model of flexicurity capitalism that exhibits a second labor market with the government as an employer of first resort, where all workers not employed by firms in the private sector find meaningful employment. We show that the model exhibits a unique interior steady...

Does government size and structure adapt to changes in government's organisational environment (particularly to uncertainty and complexity) as predicted by organisational theory? We find - using a range of statistical analyses - support for each of the major theories of organisation adaptation...

It is common knowledge that John Maynard Keynes advocated bold government action to deal with recessions and unemployment. What is not commonly known is that modern "Keynesian policies" bear little, if any, resemblance to the policy measures Keynes himself believed would guarantee true full...

I study a model of geopolitical organization endogenizing the size of nations, of their public spending and of their degree of openness. The optimal geography may not be a stable equilibrium and the Alesina-Spolaore bias toward too many nations tends to be confirmed. However, multiple equilibria...

In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and economic growth/fluctuations. The set-up is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy, in which two political parties can alternate in power. The party in office chooses...

Côte d'Ivoire is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocoa beans, it accounts for 40% of the WAEMU's output, and 11% of its population are immigrant workers. Any political instability in the country will not only affect the domestic economy, but it will also affect the international...

We investigate the empirical impact of violence as compared to other trade impediments on trade flows. Our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999, which brings together information from the Rose [2004] dataset, the ITERATE dataset for...

This short paper reconsiders the popular result that the lower the probability of getting reelected, the stronger the incumbent politicians incentive to follow short-sighted, inefficient policies. The set-up is a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth and optimal fiscal policy, in which...