Coinage debasements were a prevalent and generally very harmful feature of most economies in late-medieval western Europe, and most certainly in Burgundian Flanders (1384-1482). Flanders also experienced several economic recessions or contractions from three related sources: warfare; the...

The negotiating strategies of parties to a corporate bankruptcy are shaped by the rules and procedures of bankruptcy law. The rules have an asymmetric impact on the debtor and its creditors. To analyze the effect of this asymmetry, the paper develops a model of bankruptcy negotiation based on a...

Several recent studies have found that earnings inequality in Canada has grown considerably since the late 1970's. Using an extraordinary data base drawn from longitudinal income tax records, we decompose this growth in earnings inequality into its persistent and transitory components. We find...

This paper develops a methodology for nonparametric estimation of a polarization measure due to Anderson Ge and Leo (2006) based on kernel estimation techniques. We give the asymptotic theory of our estimator, which in some cases is non standard due to boundary value problems. We also propose a...

We develop a dynamic, general equilibrium model to understand how multinationals affect host countries through knowledge diffusion. Workers learn from their managers and knowledge diffusion takes place through worker mobility. We identify two forces that determine wages : the labour demand...

Between 1940 and 2000 there has been a substantial increase of educational attainment in the United States. What caused this trend? We develop a model of human capital accumulation that features a non-degenerate distribution of educational attainment in the population. We use this framework to...

We study optimal patent design in a setting with sequential innovation. Firms innovate by undertaking "research" activities to generate new ideas and by undertaking "development" activities to transform these ideas into viable products. Both innovation incentives and the welfare costs of patent...

We build a heterogeneous life-cycle model which captures a large number of salient features of individual labor supply, by education, over the life cycle. The model provides an aggregation theory of individual labor supply, firmly grounded on micro evidence, and is used to study the aggregate...

We consider a standard social choice environment with linear utilities and independent, one-dimensional, private types. We prove that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism there exists an equivalent dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that delivers the same interim...

The literature on the returns to training has pointed out that, immediately following a training episode, wages of participants in employer-sponsored training increase substantially while wages of participants in government-sponsored training hardly change. We argue that a clear selection issue...