Being relatively low earners, migrants are net beneficiaries of the welfare state. Therefore, in a static setup migration may be resisted by the entire native-born population. However, it is shown that in a dynamic setup with a pension system which is an important pillar of any welfare state,...

We develop a model of firm size in which firms are unable to access as many consumers as they want. Nwely arrived consumers match randomly with firms. Subsequently consumers must pay "search costs"to be able to switch firms.

The new decade has been called "the age of information." We show that, although information has become more accessible, the increase in the variety of products has made consumers' choices complex and uncertain. Faced with uncertainty about products' attributes offered by "umbrella brands,"...

A number of East Asian and Latin American countries have beeen the recipients of a large portion of total international capital flows to developing countries, both in the late seventies/early eighties and in the early nineties. These inflows have financed persistent current account imbalances,...

This paper develops extensive new data on the legal independence of central banks in 26 former socialist economies (FSE). This data is constructed using the codification system for measuring legal independence developed in Cukierman, Webb and Neyapti (1992) and in chapter 19 of Cukierman (1992)....