Do audience costs have to be extremely large in order to credibly signal resolve and affect international crises? Existing theoretical work on audience costs suggests an affirmative answer, and recent empirical work on audience costs focuses on whether a leader can generate such large audience...

In this paper, we show that although ex ante equityholders would like to adopt an optimal displacement and operating policy, they may not have incentives to implement such a policy ex post when the manager acquires firmspecific human capital and becomes indispensable to the firm¡¯s continued...

Despite the EU Stability & Growth Pact and existing constitutional limits on public deficit/debt at the (sub)national level in many EU member countries, in the wake of the 2010 Greek bailout, many politicians and policy advisors have proposed new constitutional “debt brakes” to prevent...

We examine the “confirmation” hypothesis that audited financial reporting and disclosure of managers' private information are complements, because independent verification of outcomes disciplines and hence enhances disclosure credibility. Committing to higher audit fees (a measure of...

Broad consensus exists that the ability of political actors to make credible commitments is key to development. An important and little-explored determinant of the credibility of political commitments is the existence of organizations that facilitate citizen collective action to sanction...

Recent theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated a clear negative link between macroeconomic and political uncertainty and levels of private investment across countries. This result raises the question what institutions might help reduce this uncertainty, in particular by allowing host...

Recent theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated a clear negative link between macroeconomic and political uncertainty and levels of private investment across countries. This result raises the question what institutions might help reduce this uncertainty, in particular by allowing host...