Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic increase in the size of the financial sector and in the compensation of financial executives. This increase has been associated with greater risk-taking and the use of more complex financial instruments. Parallel to this trend, the...

During the period from 1880 to 1950 publicly managed retirement security programs became an important part of the social fabric in most advanced economies. In this paper we study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. We describe a model economy in which demographics,...

Recent studies have shown that the dynamics of firms (growth, job relocation and exit) are negatively associated with the firm's size. In this paper we analyze whether financial factors are important in generating this negative relation. We develop a model in which, at each point in time, firms...

A large and increasing fraction of the value of executives compensation is accountedfor by security grants. It is often argued that the optimal compensation contracts characterized in the theoretical literature can be implemented by means of stock or option grants. However, in most cases the...