The paper examines why capital didn't flow from the rich to the poor. The problems identified are categorized in three broad categories: lack of complementary human capital, information asymmetries and transaction costs for small loan sizes. It explains how moneylenders solve the information...

Consumer advocates won a victory with the passage of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. (Credit Card Act). The Credit Card Act bans certain pricing practices that were confusing to credit card users. Ironically, the seeds of this legislative victory may...

The U.S. Bankruptcy code changed dramatically with the passage of The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act Of 2005. This act increased the costs and decreased the benefits of bankruptcy to consumers. Supporters of the law claimed that it would benefit consumers as well as...

This paper provides risk/reward evaluation and legal analysis of foreign investing under Cuban Law No. 118 (2014). Section I addresses dynamic changes in Cuba since 2008. Section II examines reforms of Cuban foreign investment laws. Section III explores investment options such as import/export,...

In the context of the development of the Internet, numerous electronic payment systems have been set up in order to secure on line payments. The object of the paper precisely consists in taking the measure of these evolutions to question some banking and monetary incidences of the development of...

Amicus Brief submitted in the Bankruptcy of Lyondell Chemical Company, analyzing fraudulent transfer issues by applying the techniques developed in "Leveraged Buyout Bankruptcies, the Problem of Hindsight Bias, and the Credit Default Swap Solution" - http://ssrn.com/abstract=1632084

The methods that bankruptcy courts have traditionally used to adjudicate fraudulent transfer claims have at times led to inconsistent, unpredictable, and inadvertently biased outcomes. However, recent legal and financial innovations may aid bankruptcy courts in assessing fraudulent transfer...

This paper studies the role of narratives for macroeconomic fluctuations. Microfounding narratives as directed acyclic graphs, we show how exposure to different narratives can affect expectations in an otherwise-standard macroeconomic framework. We identify such competing narratives in news...

On September 3-4, 2009 SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economicsorganized the Colloquium "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium.