This paper reports results from two experimental studies that investigate insurance behaviours in low-probability high-loss risk situations. The first study took place in France and the second one in Germany. These two studies reveal that insurance behaviours may depend on the past-experience...

This paper reports results from an experimental study that investigates insurance behaviors in low-probability, high-loss risk situations. The study reveals that insurance behaviors may depend on the length of the commitment period of insurance policies, namely the period during which...

Pensions reforms have been accelerating in Europe since the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s : a common trend consists of strengthening the link between the individual contribution period and the level of pension. In a first part of the paper, we show that this common trend takes place...

I examine in detail the motives of bilateral aid allocation decisions, as they are revealed by data on bilateral aid commitments. I identify both self-interest and recipient needs and merits motives in aid allocation. Self-interest motives are related to economic and political ties between...

Most studies on the green tax reform issue point out that environmental taxes exacerbate pre-existing tax distortions, thereby increasing the welfare costs associated with the overall tax code. As a result, the optimal environmental tax should lie below the Pigovian level (or marginal social...

In this paper, we study the on-line version of the bin-packing problem. We analyze the approximation behaviour of an on-line bin-packing algorithm under an approximation criterion called differential ratio. We are interested in two types of results : the differential competitivity ratio...

The aim of this paper is to scope the different institutional possibilities offered to the Europeans infrastructure managers into obtaining the most efficient cooperation between them and evaluate the possible effects of the European commission policy on this topic. The goal of this cooperation...

This paper investigates the relative importance of different types of news in driving significant stock price changes of firms in the defense industry. We implement a systematic event study with a sample of the 58 largest publicly listed companies in the defense industry, over the time period...

We introduce a two-period general equilibrium model with uncertainty and incomplete financial markets, where default is allowed and agents face in case they do default an utility penalty, which is their own private information. In this setting, if agents have heterogeneous characteristics they...