We develop a theory and empirical test of how the legal system affects the relationship between a venture investor and an entrepreneur. The theory uses a double moral hazard framework to show how optimal contracts and investor actions depend on the quality of the legal system. The empirical...

In this briefly note we extend the Mountford.s article "Can a Brain Drain be good for growth in the source economy?" by introducing an active role of the government in the education decisions of the agent by public education, taxes and subsidies. First, we demonstrate that the main results...

This paper summarizes the recent literature on income distribution in European nations drawing on some of the material used in the OECD project report (see above) and additional new material.

Problems of the systems for protecting the elderly have become pressing on a world wide scale albeit for different reasons. In many industrialized countries with mature systems the share of GDP that is redistributed via the mandatory pension system is criticized as being too high. High...

Using year-by-year measures of income distribution provided by the LIS dataset for eight continental Europe countries, this paper considers the recent literature on income inequality and growth to test the following propositions: does inequality converge during the process of economic growth?...

Low pay is conventionally measured in terms of the gross earnings of the individual, related to benchmarks derived from the distribution of earnings such as half or two-thirds of the median. Poverty status, on the other hand, is usually assessed on the basis of the disposable income of the...

In this paper we propose an aggregate measure of income inequality for all founding countries of the European monetary union. Applying the methodology of the Theil index we are able to derive a measure for Euroland as a whole by exploiting information of two data sets, the European Community...

This study explores income changes in nine European countries. First, in order to rank the distributions of income, we apply dominance criteria. Then, we extend this standard approach and examine the differences between Lorenz and Generalized Lorenz curves by means of nonparametric methods. We...

This paper examines the effects of demographic structure on the evolution of inequality in Italy from 1977 to 1995, and on its inequality ranking relative to 11 of the other 14 European Union countries in the mid-1990s. The composition of Italian households was substantially different in 1995...