The financial crisis that began in 2007 in the United States swept the world, producing substantial bank failures and forcing unprecedented state aid for the crippled global financial system. Bringing together three leading financial economists to provide an international perspective, Balancing...

We scrutinize the conceptual framework commonly used in the incomplete contract literature. This literature usually assumes that contractual incompleteness is due to the transaction costs of describing - or of even foreseeing - the possible states of nature in advance. We argue, however, that...

Starting with a simple benchmark, we first derive the characteristics of optimal employment protection. In the benchmark, employment protection takes the form of layoff taxes, used to finance unemployment benefits. We then consider a number of extensions, and show how this principle must be...