We show a fundamental property of human capital investments : they are not independent of the aggregate state of labor markets. In particular, frictions and slackness of the labor market raise the returns to specific human capital investments relative to general investments. This is a property...

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Since the early 1998 paper by LLSV, a growing body of research has argued that “legal origins” have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic development. Following the methodology of LLSV, an original data-base of 51 bankruptcy laws has been built: it ranges...

La sous-évaluation de la monnaie chinoise vis-à-vis du dollar est souvent dénoncée comme l’une des causes des déséquilibres mondiaux. Les autorités américaines soutiennent que la Chine manipule son taux de change tandis que la majorité des travaux empiriques estiment que le yuan est...

The Doha Development Agenda is the first "round" of multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization and is also the first time that multilateral trade talks have explicitly sought to focus on the interests of developing countries. Developing Asia therefore has much at stake in...

Spillovers from national industrial policies can cause helpful or harmful competition among policy makers and helpful or harmful interactions among the targeted industries. As a result, it is not in general possible to say whether industrial policy coordination is good or bad. However, reaching...

In Europe After the NO Votes, Professor Patrick Messerlin of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, argues that the NO votes in the French and Dutch referenda on the proposed EU constitution highlight the need to design an economic agenda for the future of the EU congruent with its...

The New Member States (NMS) have to comply with the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) rules: public deficits below 3% of GDP and public debts below 60% of GDP, although they cannot be subject to fines as long as they are not members of the euro area. Most of the NMS currently run higher than 3% of...

L’objectif de la thèse est d’analyser les propriétés empiriques du cycle européen et leurs implications en termes de politiques économiques. A cette fin, nous développons plusieurs modèles à composantes inobservables que nous appliquons à des séries de PIB de la zone euro, du...

Since its reform in 1998, the national association of French employers and industry, MEDEF, appears to be an example of strong interest organisation. Unlike trade unions, the peak business organisation has been stable and unified, especially in terms of membership density. Through a study of the...