This paper discusses the design of appropriate institutions for trade policy-making in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on US and EU experience it argues that legislatures should set the broad parameters, leaving commodity-specific detail to the executives. Sectoral Ministries, e.g. of...

In this paper we analyze the impact of government and private ownership of banks on firms’ probability to innovate. We estimate firms’ decision to innovate and their selection of a main lender for a sample of 9000 German manufacturing companies. Since these two decisions may be...

This Paper studies the design of lawmaking and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure. As a potential remedy, a regulatory regime is introduced. The major functional...

We show that when the researcher’s (observable but not contractible) contribution to innovation is crucial, a covenant not to compete (CNC) reduces effort and profits under both spot and relational contracts. Having no CNC allows the researcher to leave for a rival. This alleviates a...

Many of the world’s developed economies have introduced, or are planning to introduce, bank bail-in regimes. Both the planned EU resolution regime and the European Stability Mechanism Treaty involve the participation of bank creditors in bearing the costs of bank recapitalization via the...

A basic question for the design of bankruptcy law concerns whether value should be divided in accordance with absolute priority. Research done in the past decade has suggested that deviations from absolute priority have beneficial ex ante effects. In contrast, this Paper shows that ex post...

This Paper develops extensive new indices of legal independence (Central Bank Independence, or CBI) for new central banks in 26 former socialist economies (FSEs). The indices reveal that central bank reform in the FSE during the 1990s has been quite ambitious. In spite of large price shocks,...

The objective of this Paper is to investigate the determinants of EU merger control decisions. We consider a sample of 164 EU merger control decisions and evaluate the anti-competitive consequences of these mergers from the reaction of the stock market price of competitors to the merging firms....

We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data covers the number of procedures, official time, and official cost that a start-up must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most countries. Countries with...

We study the enforcement of competition policy against collusion under Leniency Programs, which give reduced fines to firms revealing information to the Antitrust Authority. Such programs give firms an incentive to break collusion, but may also have a pro-collusive effect, since they decrease...