Following the financial crisis of 2008/9, there has been renewed interest in what Greenwald and Stiglitz dubbed ‘pecuniary externalities’. Two that affect borrowers and lenders balance sheets in pro-cyclical fashion are described, along with measures that might help curb their destabilising...

A 'folk theorem' originating, among others, in the work of Stiglitz maintains that competitive equilibria are always or 'generically' inefficient (unless contracts directly specify consumption levels as in Prescott and Townsend, thus bypassing trading in anonymous markets). This paper critically...

The promising prospect of a ‘New Economy’ in the US attracted substantial equity inflows in the late 1990s, helping to finance the country’s burgeoning current account deficit. After peaking in 2000, however, US stocks fell by some 8 trillion dollars in value. To assess the welfare effects...

This paper analyses the impact of labour demand and labour market regulations on the corporate structure of fims. It finds that higher wages are associated with lower monitoring, irrespective of whether these high wages are caused by labour market regulations, unions or higher labour demand....

Is sovereign debt so different from corporate debt that there is no need for bankruptcy procedures to handle potential defaults? The basic tools of finance seem to confirm that, without water-tight sovereign immunity, creditors face a Prisoner’s Dilemma: litiginous creditors may be tempted to...