We use information from the tax returns of U.S. multinational corporations to address three questions related to tax competition. First, does tax competition or company tax planning behavior better explain recent decreases in the local effective tax rates faced by U.S. multinationals investing...

Recent research on the International Monetary Fund has focused on the adoption, implementation and impact of their lending programs and their political dimensions. This paper evaluates this literature and suggests promising areas of future work. The first area to be surveyed deals with the...

In this paper we study worldwide antidumping (AD) case filing patterns in order to determine the extent to which economic versus strategic incentives explain the behavior of countries employing AD actions. We compare four main hypotheses. Two are motivated by the Bagwell- Staiger (1990) model of...

This paper takes a critical look at the trends in worldwide antidumping (AD) case filings during the last two decades. We examine the motives for AD filings by countries in an attempt to identify whether economic or strategic concerns are driving the recent upsurge in AD use. We begin by...

Judicial independence is not only a necessary condition for the impartiality of judges, it can also endanger it: judges that are independent could have incentives to remain uninformed, become lazy or even corrupt. It is therefore often argued that judicial independence and judicial...

This paper analyzes whether nation-state governments can increase their credibility by becoming members of international organizations. Credibility is an important asset because it determines the real interest rate and is expected to have an important impact on investment and growth. It is...

We provide insights into determinants of the rating level of 371 issuers which defaulted in the years 1999 to 2003, and into the leader-follower relationship between Moody's and S&P. The evidence for the rating level suggests that Moody's assigns lower ratings than S&P for all observed periods...

In recent years stock exchanges have been increasingly diversifying their operations into related business areas such as derivatives trading, post-trading services and software sales. This trend can be observed most notably among profit-oriented trading venues. While the pursuit for...

More financially developed countries show lower volatility of industrial output. Volatility is particularly reduced in industries that are more financially dependent. Most of the reduction is in idiosyncratic volatility. Systematic volatility is reduced less strongly, implying that industries...