This paper makes three contributions to the growing literature on culture and economics. Using answers to the World Values Survey for a sample of 79 countries over the 1989-2004 period, we first provide evidence of cultural homogenization between countries. Second, we provide a model of...

This Paper investigates the links between the nature of contractual relationships within firms, the strength of information flows spreading between firms and the dynamics of technological competition. At the firm level, we focus on the corporate incentives to design Knowledge Management policies...

This Paper considers a dynamic model of innovations in which firms can endogenously bias the direction of technological change. Both in a North-North and North-South context, we show that, when globalization triggers an increased threat of technological leapfrogging or imitation, firms tend to...

This paper considers a dynamic North South model of international trade and innovations in which firms can endogenously bias the direction of technological change. We show that, when there is a differential degree of protection of property rights between the two regions, innovating firms face a...

This Paper looks at the impact of international vertical specialization when the final good industry is imperfectly competitive. Final goods are assembled out of different fragments. In the absence of international vertical specialization all fragments required to produce a given final good must...

This paper documents that at the individual stock level insiders sales peak many months before a large drop in the stock price, while insiders purchases peak only the month before a large jump. We provide a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon based on trading constraints and asymmetric...

This Paper aims to explain the sharp rise in unhedged foreign borrowing by South East Asian corporations in the few years prior to the crisis despite remarkably little change in fundamentals. The crucial element of our story is the complementarity between decisions of firms and of the central...

This Paper is concerned with the interaction between trade policies and the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). In particular, it investigates, within the framework of a general equilibrium model with endogenous growth, the welfare implications of an international agreement on one...

This paper re-examines the incentives of mutual fund managers arising from investor flows. We provide evidence that the convexity of the flow-performance relationship varies with economic activity. We show that the effect is economically large and is not driven by abnormal years. We test two...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically the relationship between trade and war. We show that the intuition that trade promotes peace is only partially true even in a model where trade is beneficial to all, war reduces trade and leaders take into account the costs of war. When war can...