In this paper, we analyse a novel panel data set to compare the relevance of alternative measures of capitalisation for bank failure during the 2007-10 crisis, and to search for evidence of manipulated Basel risk-weights.  Compared with the unweighted leverage ratio, we find the risk-weighted...

Housing was the major domestic priority of all postwar UK governments.  By 1970 the physical conditions of British housing had been transformed; by the 1990s seventy per cent of households in England owned their own homes.  Yet in 2012 there were still parts of many cities that deserved labeling...

The condition for when a price control increases consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised.  When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases consumer surplus if the eleasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or...

This paper proposes that all new euro area sovereign borrowing be in the form of jointly guaranteed Eurobonds.  To avoid classic moral hazard problems and to insure the guarantors against default, each country would pay a risk premium conditional on economic fundamentals to a joint debt...

Time invariance of factor loadings is a standard assumption in the analysis of large factor models.  Yet, this assumption may be restrictive unless parameter shifts are mild (i.e., local to zero).  In this paper we develop a new testing procedure to detect big breaks in these loadings at...

We posit that screening IPOs requires specialized labor which, in the short run, is in fixed supply.  Hence, a sudden increase in demand for IPO financing increases the compensation of IPO screening labor.  Increased compensation results in reduced screening which encourages sub-marginal firms...

This paper considers optimal compensation for a CEO who is entrusted with administering corporate assets honestly.  Optimal compensation designs maximize integrity at minimum cost.  These designs are very 'low powered', i.e., while specifying a lower bound for performance and increasing pay...

This paper investigates the behaviour of bodies or organizations, operating in a stochastic environment, where there is a delegated decision maker.  A crucial decision is when to delegate to another decision maker.  The problem may be intrapersonal, as occurs when there are endogenously...

This paper introduces signaling in a standard market microstructure model so as to explore the economic circumstances under which hype and dump manipulation can be an equilibrium outcome.  We consider a discrete time, multi-period model with stages of signaling and asset trading.  A single...

Previous studies into aid allocation have concluded that foreign aid is allocated not only according to development needs but also according to donor self-interest.  We revisit this topic and allow for donor as well as recipient specific effects in our analysis.  Our results indicate that...