Looking at a sample of nearly 2,400 banks in 69 countries, we find that stronger creditor rights tend to promote greater bank risk taking. Consistent with this finding, we also show that stronger creditor rights increase the likelihood of financial crisis. On the plus side, we find that stronger...

This paper offers a contract-based theory to explain the determination of standard hours, overtime hours and overtime premium pay. We expand on the wage contract literature that emphasises the role of firm-specific human capital and that explores problems of contract efficiency in the face of...

Economic and monetary reunification in Germany has proved to be more expensive than previously thought--and not jus t for the Germans. If a "Mezzogiorno problem" of continuing fiscal transfers to the East, and possible migration flows westwards, are t o be avoided, then there has to be...

In this paper we develop a model for local authority size that is based on the approach towards local government reform that was used by the UK governments in the 1970s and the 1990s. To do so, we examine the different aspects of costs for local services, the minimum cost size facility used to...

The main purpose of this paper is to distinguish clearly between local authorities and clubs and to consider the circumstances in which individual consumers would prefer to have services provided by one or the other. We also consider the circumstances in which consumers would prefer individual...

Based on a small, open-economy IS-LM prototype model, this paper examines the sources of macroeconomic instabilities in Hong Kong and Singapore operating under two different currency board arrangements. The empirical findings suggest that in general, both external and internal factors contribute...

In this paper, the authors present a methodology for measuring the effects of economic policy where expectations are forward-looking. The methodology is then applied to the National Institute model, version 11; in this version, expectational variables appear in several key equations and the model...