Using a new database covering some 91 supervisory agencies, this paper examines how important various skilled experts are in the regulatory process and the relative usage of different kinds of such experts. We seek to explore what kind of perspective supervisors in different institutional...

In this paper we provide a characterization of the welfare properties of rational expectations equilibria of economies in which, prior to trading, agents have some information over the realization of uncertainity. We study a model with asymmetrically informed agents, treating symmetric...

We develop new tests of the capital asset pricing model that take account of and are valid under the assumption that the distribution generating returns is elliptically symmetric; this assumption is neccessary and sufficient for the validity of the CAPM. Our test is based on semi-parametric...

In this paper we explain the apparent diversification discount of conglomerates without assuming inefficent-cross subsidisation through internal capital markets. Instead we assume that an internal capital market efficiently redistributes scare resources across a conglomerates divisions between...

The paper sets out to tackle the following puzzle when insiders of a firm have more information than outside investors. The insiders desire to sell overpriced securities creates an Adverse Selection problem leading to two contradictory results. On the one hand, it leads to Myers & Majluf...

We study the relation of financial development and the pace of technological advance in a dynamic agency theoretic model. A firm which is financed by outside shareholders but run by managers has the prospect of a process innovation which arrives stochastically. Adopting the innovation requires...

The European Union will enter Stage Three of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The development of euro financial markets and thickness externalities in the use of the euro as a means of payment will be the major factors determining the importance of the euro as an international...

The main macroeconomic cost of a European Monetary Union could result from the loss of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an instrument for real exchange rate adjustments between regions exposed to asymmetric goods-market (IS) shocks. However, if asset-market (LM) shifts drive macroeconomic...

On the international scene, away from national legal rules, the use of different currencies is largely due to the process of the ''''Invisible Hand''''. How do currencies flow when their circulations are not tightly guided and canalised? The paper develops a three-country model of the world...

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In...