A number of jurisdictions are considering imposing price caps on the interchange fees that card issuers receive from merchant acquirers when cardholders pay with their cards. Several have already done so. This paper examines the net impact of these price caps on consumers. The economics of...

A case of success up until the 1990s, the Portuguese economy entered into a boom and a long slump with the adoption of the Euro. Entering with an overvalued exchange rate the country required an adjustment process based on deflation and productivity expansion. However, policies undertaken...

The central purpose of this paper is to take stock in the regulatory reform looking with the prism of economic theory. We start by a summary of the basic principles that should preside at the reform. The paper studies the financial regulatory reforms currently proposed by the US administration,...

The current financial and economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, is a cycle of banking and real economy crisis that can only be stopped by appropriate structural policies to shore-up and deleverage the financial system, supply liquidity through the monetary policy and stimulate...

Does openness contribute to convergence of countries to the US income level? Our statistical and econometric analysis concludes for an affirmative answer. Using data for 150 countries for 1970-2012 we conclude almost all cases fell in three groups of countries that experienced a significant...

The new Brazilian regime for merger control was established by Law 12529 of November 30th, 2011, bringing antitrust and merger control largely in line with OECD and ICN recommendations. Major institutional changes was the concentration of merger control in only one institution (CADE), replacing...