One of the standard predictions of the agency theory is that more incentives can be given to agents with lower risk aversion. In this paper we show that this relationship may be absent or reversed when the technology is endogenous and projects with a higher e¢ ciency are also riskier. Using a...

The aim of this paper is to study the welfare e¤ects of consumer cooperatives in mixed oligopoly markets. We show that under decreasing returns to scale and su¢ ciently high market competition these …rms can contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers rather than...

This paper puts forward a framework for evaluating the effects of governmental decentralization on the shadow economy and corruption. The theoretical analysis demonstrates that decentralization exerts both a direct and an indirect impact on the shadow economy and corruption. Firstly,...

Corporate criminal liability legislation has been the subject of a widespread debate around the world in response to the financial scandals of the early 2000s. The existing legal regimes en- tail compliance requirements, such as internal monitoring mechanisms, with the aim of inducing firms to...

This paper aims at analysing whether banking changes that occurred in Italy in the last fifteen years have mined the soundness of its financial system. We look for potential threats to financial stability as a result of the dynamic behaviour of Italian banks that progressively have been...

This paper aims at analyzing the impact of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) on frms' investment policies in the presence of financial imperfections. Our results show that investment is positively correlated to measures of internal funds available to firms and negatively to the level of...

This paper aims at shedding light on the influence of guarantees on the loan pricing. After reviewing the literature on the role of guarantees in bank lending decisions, we estimate a bank interest rate model that explicitly includes collateral and personal guarantees as explanatory variables....

Start-ups increasingly find the prospect of university-industry collaborations to be a powerful driver of innovation and entrepreneurship activity. Moreover, at the geographical level, they are attracted by teaching and research institutions, either public or private. This paper focuses on the...

In this paper we present a simple model of university-industry collaborations with heterogeneous agents, which is the standard case of technology transfer. We study the characteristics of the matching process, that makes this exchange in technology transfer either efficient or unfeasible. We...

This paper analyses how financial and labor market imperfections jointly influence investment. The contemporaneous presence of imperfections in both markets gives rise to a negative correlation between EPL and investment: firms facing negative shocks see their financial constraints worsen in...