Germany has the lowest birth rate among all OECD countries. To encourage fertility, the federal government has recently introduced a set of reforms that led to a substantial expansion of public child care for under three year old children. Using administrative county-level data, we exploit...

The paper studies the design of couples income taxation when consumption and labor supply decisions within the couple are made in a cooperative way according to some bargaining scheme. Specifically, the couple maximizes a weighted sum of the spouses utilities. In the first part of the paper, the...

We consider a two-stage principal-agent model with limited liability in which a CEO is employed as agent to gather information about suitable merger targets and to manage the merged corporation in case of an acquisition. Our results show that the CEO systematically recommends targets with low...

This paper analyzes innovation races in a moral hazard setting. I develop a model where two competing entrepreneurs, financed by a single venture capitalist, work independently on the same project. The venture capitalist cannot observe the allocation of funds she provides, which creates a moral...

In a globalized economy, firms move production to other countries without turning a hair. A local policy maker who seeks to avert relocation faces a dynamic problem - incentivizing the firm to remain in its home country today does not guarantee that the firm also stays in the future. We...

On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.