This paper derives optimal employment contracts when workers are risk averse and there are employment and unemployment risks. Without income insurance, consumption rises during employment and falls during unemployment. Optimal employment contracts offer severance compensation to smooth...

This paper summarizes inequalities in PC ownership using data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) and the British General Household Survey (GHS) for the period 1984-98. Between 1988 and 1994, British households were more likely than US households to own a personal computer (PC). After...

This paper uses data on a sample of Australian teenagers to test for neighbourhood effects on school dropout rates. The data allows us to test for neighbourhood effects at two different spatial scales. We find that educational composition of the larger neighbourhood can influence the dropout...

Markets reacted strongly to the World Trade Center attacks both in Europe and in the United States. The extent of this crisis was difficult to assess at the time, underlining the need for a specific tool to measure the magnitude of financial crises. A first measure was recently proposed and...

This paper assesses the potential of `workplace training'' with reference to German Apprenticeship. When occupational matching is important, we derive conditions under which firms provide `optimal'' training packages. Since the German system broadly meets these conditions, we evaluate the...

We study the effects of sterilised intervention operations executed on behalf of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) using tick-by-tick transactions data between 1986 and 1995. We extend the preliminary results obtained by Fischer and Zurlinden (1991) by matching these data with intra-day indicative...

Despite mounting empirical evidence to the contrary, the literature on predictability of stock returns almost uniformly assumes a time-invariant relationship between state variables and returns. In this paper we propose a two-stage approach for forecasting of financial return series that are...

This paper shows how separation of ownership and control may arise as a response to overload costs, despite agency costs, and how conglomerates arise as solution to information asymmetries in capital markets. In a context where entrepreneurs have the ability to run projects and improve their...

Ambivalence in the regulatory definition of capital adequacy for credit risk has recently stirred the financial services industry to collateral loan obligations (CLOs) as an important balance sheet management tool. CLOs represent a specialised form of Asset-Backed Securitisation (ABS), with...

Common wisdom states that teenage childbearing reduces schooling, labour market experience and adult wages. However, the decisions to be a teenage mother, to quit school, and be less attached to the labour market might all stem from some personal or family characteristics. Using the National...