During 2005-2006, the Chinese government implemented a reform aimed at eliminating the so-called non-tradable shares (NTS), shares typically held by the State or by politically connected institutional investors that were issued at the early stage of financial market development. Our analysis,...

Does firm ownership change affect performance? On the basis of a mean-value analysis and a fixed effects panel analysis of over 1100 Chinese companies during the period of ownership reform (1997-2003), this paper examines the performance impact of firm ownership transformation in China. The data...

The paper investigates small business lending as an information problem. It models the effects of information asymmetries within the bank combined with fixed wages. Two kinds of inefficiencies arise in equilibrium: the credit officer either sometimes shirks or he is occasionally fired. In both...

This paper explores the reasons why an increasing number of firms in continental Europe are unifying their shares into a single class, and analyzes the consequences of this restructuring. Interestingly, recent changes in corporate governance environment have created a situation when the reasons...

This paper reviews recent approaches to modeling the labour market and assessestheir implications for in‡ation dynamics through both their e¤ect on marginalcost and on price-setting behaviour. In a search and matching environment, weconsider the following modeling setups: right-to-manage...

We use a cohort based model to analyse determinants of labour force participation fordisaggregated groups of workers in the euro area and the five largest euro areacountries. The model captures age and cohort effects as indicators of (unobserved)determinants of participation behaviour. We use...

This paper examines the impact of downward wage rigidity (nominal and real) onoptimal steady-state inflation. For this purpose, we extend the workhorse model ofErceg, Henderson and Levin (2000) by introducing asymmetric menu costs for wagesetting. We estimate the key parameters by simulated...

Labour Supply and Incentives to Work in Europe highlights recent developments in the labour supply in Europe and gives a detailed assessment of their link with economic policies and labour market institutions. Despite major changes in European labour supply during the past few decades, the...