This paper reexamines the analysis in Maug (1998) on the relationship between market liquidity and large shareholder activism. Taking explicitly into account the effect of a majority requirement for intervention in the management of a firm, we show that, contrary to Maug's claim, there is a...

In this paper, we develop a theory of union bargaining power based on firm specific skills acquired by the insider workforce. We show that unions increase the bargaining power of insiders only in states of the world in which the firm would like to retain insiders but not hire outsiders.

In this paper we look at a panel of OECD aggregate fertility and labor market data between 1970 and 1995 and we report some striking recent developments. Total Fertility Rates (TFR) were falling and Female Participation Rates were increasing, conforming to a well known long-run trend. Along the...

This paper tries to find an economic explanation to the fact that vaccines for death-causing diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tubersulosis, have not been discovered yet.

This paper tests two hypotheses for the overbidding behavior of the banks in the fixed rate tenders conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB) from January 1999 until June 2000. One hypothesis attributes the overbidding to the expectations of a future tightening of monetary policy, while the...

This paper tests a traditional model of asset pricing, the CCAPM (Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model), using data from the Spanish stock market. A generalized calibration method is used to test this model. This method allows us to judge the degree of correspondance between the population...

This paper aims to study if imperfections in the labor market justify a fiscal policy where public spending, labor income tax rates and debt are set to stabilize output. We present a dynamic general equilibrium model and solve for the optimal policy considering two different labor market setups....