The rapidly growing literature studying the relationship between legal origin, investor protection and finance has stimulated an important debate in academic circles. It has also generated a cottage industry of applied research and strong policy statements. This paper discusses the implications,...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine presents many challenges to the international order. To understand what is at stake, we argue that the nature of the political regime matters to understand this conflict. We propose a classification of three different types of political regimes (empires, nation...

The paper analyzes China's rise, its causes and consequences as well as China's geopolitical strategy. We discuss in particular its meaning in the context of the evolution of the International (dis)order, threatened by nationalist populism. A particularly important question is the effect of...

This study provides evidence that culture understood as values and beliefs moves very slowly. Despite massive institutional change, values and beliefs in transition countries have not changed much over the last 20 years. Evidence suggests that culture is affected by the long run historical past,...

This paper integrates the problem of designing corporate bankruptcy rules into a theory of optimal debt structure. We show that, in an incomplete contract framework with imperfect renegotiation, having multiple creditors increases a firm's debt capacity while increasing its incentives to default...

This paper integrates the problem of designing corporate bankruptcy rules into a theory of optimal debt structure. We show that, in an incomplete-contracts framework with imperfect renegotiation, having multiple creditors increases a firm's debt capacity while increasing its incentives to...