This paper examines why unsolicited ratings tend to be lower than solicited ratings. Bothself-selection among issuers and strategic conservatism of rating agencies may be reasonableexplanations. Analyses of default incidences of non-U.S. borrowers between January 1996and December 2006 show that...

This working paper surveys theoretical and empirical work about market liquidityand market liquidity risk. It addresses interested practitioners as well asstudents who want to gain a quick overview about the latest progress in researchin market liquidity.

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of developments in the microfinance sector beforeand after the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 by comparing them with developments intraditional banking sectors of emerging market economies and developing countries. Thefindings indicate that microfinance...

While the regional economic integration encompassing the former Soviet Union (FSU) transpiresto be inefficient, there appears to be a stronger interest in regionalism in smaller groupsof more homogenous and geographically connected countries of the region, specifically, CentralAsia. Using a new...

The absence or the presence of the resource curse is often explained by the specifics of politicaland institutional factors. The aim of this paper is to study this effect looking separately ateconomic and political institutions and at their interaction. Unlike most empirical papers inthe...

Building on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, recent advances in biosemiotics haveresulted into a concise framework for the analysis of signs in living systems. This paper exploresthe potential for economics and shows how biosemiotics can integrate two differentresearch agendas, each of...

Today, the investment into indices has become a widely used strategy in portfolio management.While Index Funds and ETFs try to represent the performance of a single index, otherportfolio strategies use indices as portfolio components to concentrate on the allocation task.Because an index cannot...

The aim of the paper is to study the relation between the demand for human rights and foreconomic prosperity. It analyzes the demand not, as it is often done in the literature, from the“voice” perspective (political activity), but rather looks at the “exit” perspective...

Since years, incentives for the management have become a standard upon acquisitions of companies byPrivate Equity Investors – so-called Buy-Outs. However, until this date there are no empirical studies availableon the arrangements of management participations and potential conflicts of...

Recently, Kleidon suggested a restatement of the Gaia hypothesis based on Maximum Entropyapproaches to the Earth system. Refuting conceptions of Gaia as a homeostatic system,Gaia is seen as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system which continuously moves awayfrom equilibrium, driven by maximum...