This paper studies how comparing can be used to provide information in financial markets in the presence of a hidden characteristics problem. Although an investor cannot precisely estimate the future returns of an entrepreneur’s projects, the investor can mitigate the asymmetric information...

It is commonly thought that an open economy can accommodate output shocks through either exchange rate or real sector adjustments. We formalise this notion by incorporating labour market rigidities into an 'escape clause' model of currency crises. We show that the absence of structural reform...

Finland experienced an extremely severe economic depression in the early 1990s. In the midst of this crisis, significant new legislation was passed that increased supervisory powers of financial market regulators and reformed bankruptcy procedures, significantly decreasing the protection of...

We study the interaction between private and public funding of innovative projects in the presence of adverse-selection based financing constraints. Government programmes allocating direct subsidies are based on ex-ante screening of the subsidy applications. This selection scheme may yield...

We extend the theoretical basis of the empirical literature on the effects of R&D subsidies by providing an estimable model of strategic interaction among subsidy applicants, and public and private sector R&D financiers. Our model incorporates fixed R&D costs and a cost of external finance. We...

We build a simple model to study service fee competition between an incumbent and an independent ATM deployer, and its optimal regulation. We use the model to analyze an actual regulation of such a market by competition authorities in Finland. We find that socially optimal first-best fees would...

In this article we first document the evidence showing how an efficient retail payment infrastructure enhances economic performance. We then review the policy tools available to promote efficient retail payments in Europe. We argue that while SEPA is an important policy initiative that...

We study the value of innovation in a case study of one of the most visible innovative products in recent years, Apple’s iPhone. The value effects of news announcements, patent publications, and trademarks relating to iPhone are taken into account. Our estimate of the lower bound on the value...

Economic interest in innovation policy largely arises from the fundamental importance of innovation to social welfare and from inefficiencies in innovation in a competitive market environment. As a result, a wide variety of public innovation policies are used in practice. This study reviews the...

This paper uses entrepreneurs’survival expectations around the time of market entry and subsequent venture exits to study entrepreneurial optimism. Using data on a large number of nascent entrepreneurs in the US and start-ups in Finland, we find that new entrepreneurs survival beliefs are on...