Much has been written about institutional differences between European and North American labor markets, and about their role in determining the large and persistent differences between the unemployment rates in Europe and US over the last fifteen-twenty years. The objective of this paper is to answer the question: why have these differences in labor market flexibility emerged and why do they p...

E xecutive compensation is a topic that has received attention both in the media and the academic literature. This article discusses issues relevant to the construction and interpretation of compensation …gures typically reported in both sources. First, it is not clear what precisely should be included within a measure of the chief executive o¢ cer’s (CEO’s) income tied to his …rm. Second, the ...

The efficient market hypothesis states that the market incorporates all available information to provide an accurate valuation of the asset at any given time. However, most models for forecasting the return or volatility of assets completely disregard the arrival of asset specific news (i.e., news which is directly relevant to the asset). In this paper we propose a simple adaptation to the GARC...

We use experiments to study the efficiency effects for a market as a whole of adding the possibility of forward contracting to a pre-existing spot market. We deal separately with the cases where spot market competition is in quantities and where it is in supply functions. In both cases we compare the effect of adding a contract market with the introduction of an additional competitor, changing ...

In this paper we present a model for the dynamic evolution of the term structure of default-free and defaultable interest rates. The model is set in the Libor market model framework but in contrast to the classical diffusion-driven setup, its dynamics are driven by a time-inhomogeneous Lévy process which allows us to better capture the real-world dynamics of credit spreads. We present necessary...

During the past two decades financial systems world-wide have developed rapidly in terms of size, industry structure, and the range of products and services produced. In Australia the size of the financial system, measured by total assets, has approximately doubled relative to nominal GDP in the past twenty years, while in a number of other countries the growth has been even more dramatic. More...

a r t i c l e i n f o We measure the effects of trade liberalization over the period of 1993–2002 on regional poverty levels in 259 Indonesian districts, and investigate the labor market mechanisms behind these effects. The identification strategy relies on combining information on initial regional labor and product market structure with the exogenous tariff reduction schedule over four three-y...

The issue of software patents is widely discussed in Europe today. The standard economic rationale for patents is to protect potential innovators from imitation, which ultimately provides the incentive to incur the costs of innovation. This incentive topic is strongly discussed in network effect markets such as the software market. We identified five characteristics of software which are crucia...

Industrial design is one of the intellectual property categories, which is created by an individual using his mind ‘the intellect”. Industrial design plays an important part in the marketability of products. This ornamental or aesthetic feature of products could differentiate one product from another, both having similar function. Everything produced by man involves an element of design whether...