The literature on leverage until now shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility. This paper suggests a reason why bad news is more often than not associated with higher future volatility....

The WTO system has democratic rights spillovers. In this paper, we show how GATT and WTO rules induce memberstates to advance several democratic rights: specifically political participation, due process and access toinformation. We use qualitative and quantitative tools to examine this process....

In writing The Spirit of Laws in 1748, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu does not foresee the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Montesquieu 1748). Nevertheless, one can employ Montesquieu’s methodology to analyse the functions and dysfunctions of the WTO because his...

As the world entered and suffered through the recent Great Recession, certainly the worst economic slowdown in a generation, people naturally asked: what went wrong? Although many answers have been suggested, one thing many observers point to is the decisive role played by unmitigated greed....

There is a growing interest on dynamic and broader concepts of deprivation such as vulnerability, which takes in to account the destitution of individuals from future shocks. We use the framework of decision making under uncertainty to arrive at a new measure of vulnerability to poverty. We...

This paper reexamines key results from the measurement of opportunity freedom, or the extent to which a set of options offers a decision maker real opportunities to achieve. Three cases are investigated: no preferences, a single preference, and plural preferences. The three co the cardinality...

This paper specifies and estimates a structural model of home seller behavior. The model is an application of search theory to housing and is estimated using method of moments. The estimation method uncovers an analytical closed-form relationship between reduced- form coefficients of hedonic and...

The most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, had an evocative image of capitalism. He believed that markets were propelled by animal spirits. These spirits could yield growth, but at times must be domesticated to ensure that the law of the jungle-eat or be eaten--does not...

Most multinational firms today operate multilateral production networks. Most existing emperical analyses, however, have focused on the choice between producing at home and investing overseaas and assumed firms' decisions to invest in foreign countries to be interdepedent of their locations in...

The proliferation of multinational activities has led to the emergence of new industrial clusters around the world. In this paper, we examine how "first nature" location fundamentals and "second nature" agglomeration economies jointly determine the global landscape of multinational firms. Using...