L'expérience des années 1980 a montré que la "re-solvabilisation" d'un pays surendetté et en cessation de paiements impose souvent une réduction de dette importante. Tel a été le résultat principal des plans Brady négociés par près d'une vingtaine de pays depuis 1989 : des réductions...

L’Argentine a mené entre 1991 et 2001 une des expériences de currency board les plus remarquables de la période moderne. Comment rendre compte de cette expérience, prise dans son ensemble ? Qu’apprend-elle sur les avantages et les inconvénients des currency board ? Comment expliquer son...

Since the early 1997 paper by La Porta et al., a growing body of research has argued that ‘legal origins’ have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic development. Following the methodology of La Porta et al., an original database of 51 bankruptcy laws has...

The process of development is linked to the rise of an integrated and competitive economy and polity that allow a maximal division of labor and innovation. This process relies on two intertwined dynamics. First, in the establishment of the rule of law, legal instruments are appropriated by those...

Over the last fifteen years the trade negotiations agenda has come to include more and non-border issues, and on several occasions the first step has been to obtain a consensus between the involved parties as to its contents and scope. This broadening of the trade agenda has pushed political and...

This contribution first presents a brief outline of the economic logic of bankruptcy laws as of their historical development in Europe since the Middle-Ages. This experience is then compared with what an economy without a bankruptcy law would like, and three specific, intermediary examples are...

Coordination of cross-border bankruptcies between 1870 and World War II offers a puzzling image. On the one hand, diplomats, academic lawyers, and private lobbies repeatedly tried to bring regulations closer to the ideal of unity and universality of proceedings: all parties and assets should be...

The impact of FDI on total factor productivity in Hungary during the 1990s' is assessed with a large enterprise panel. Foreign equity is associated with higher productivity levels and has a substantial, positive spillover effect on aggregate TFP growth. However, this benefit is significant only...

Under high inflation, money experiences a process of institutional fragmentation: the unit of account and the unit of payment are split and transferred on alternate supports, either a foreign currency as for instance in Argentina, or domestic indices as in Brazil. Since the early 1970s’, this...

Under high inflation, money experiences a process of institutional fragmentation: the unit of account and the unit of payment are split and transferred on alternate supports, either a foreign currency as for instance in Argentina, or domestic indices as in Brazil. Since the early 1970s', this...