A derivative is defined by the BIS (1995) as “a contract whose value depends on the price of underlying assets, but which does not require any investment of principal in those assets. As a contract between two counterparts to exchange payments based on underlying prices or yields, any transfer...

If a child has a white mother and a black father, then the child is racially.... what? How the next Census, to be held in the year 2000, should handle the multiracial' child will be decided by October. Moreover, every government agency counts races in roughly the same way, and it is the...

A so-called “asset market meltdown hypothesis” predicts that baby boomers’ large savings will drive asset market booms that will eventually collapse because of the boomers’ large retirement dissavings. As good news to baby boomers, our analysis shows that this meltdown hypothesis is...

The paper deals with various aspects of the performance, especially from a macroeconomic point of view, expected from some of the most relevant European institutions (monetary and tax authorities, unions) vis-à-vis alternative ones. The role of the rules (e.g. the Stability and Growth Pact) as...

Latin America suffer before each democratic election due to its structural clivage, high social inequity and demands. The objective of this paper is to show that at elections, for some importants countries, the contagion effects increase the correlation of the return series markets.

The paper examines the economic and regulatory factors that led to an explosion in the wholesale power prices, supply shortages, and utility insolvencies in California’s electricity sector. A necessary first step in determining the lessons learned from the California electricity crisis is a...

A central debate in industrial policy today is that between proponents of large vertically integrated firms on the one hand and advocates of networks of small specialized producers on the other. This paper argues that neither institutional structure is the universal panacea its enthusiasts...

We extend Freixas and Rochet (1997) to two-stage game: In the first stage each bank simultaneously decides on amounts of deposits. Then each bank decides on loan amounts in the second stage. Each stage is a Cournot game in quantity. Scope economies between loans and deposits also arise...

A presente comunicação preparada para o III Congresso de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, que decorreu em Setembro de 2002. Nesta comunicação visa- se identificar novas actividades empresariais, em emergência, que possam resultar da dinamização de uma área de enorme potencialidade na...

The late F. A. Hayek is remembered for the argument that the decentralized price system has enormous advantages over planned systems in the critical areas of information transmission and the use of knowledge. In many minds, the recent fall of the Soviet-style economies in Eastern Europe has...