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....

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...

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...

We examine in this paper the differential resposnse of establishements to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determint micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the activities of more than 12...

We present an endogenous growth nmodel in which both the investment to develop a new technology - that upgrades the quality of machines - and entry of imitators are determined endogenously. According to the model, how soon the new-technology machines in launched after the patent is granted is...