The basic philosophy behind Gibrat's rule of proportionate effect has been to find some common mechanism in the growth process of business firms, based on the idea that growth rates are independent of size and drawn from the same distribution. After decades of research, however, it seems fair to...

A key question in credit markets is how to disclose borrowers’ private information. Typically, banks offer incentive compatible contracts (with collateral) to induce borrowers to disclose their private information. However, if men and women systematically differ in their risk taking behavior,...

We analyze the effect of imposing a charge for the individual appropriation of common resources. In our design, withdrawing the maximum amount is the dominant strategy for every player, but the resulting equilibrium is socially inefficient. We find that the presence of a price, small enough to...

This experimental study investigates insurance decisions in low-probability, high-loss risk situations. Results indicate that subjects consider the probability of loss (loss size) when they make buying decisions (paying decisions). Most individuals are risk averse with no specific threshold...

This paper hypotheses that diverging trends for skill premium might arise from fragmentation in countries at various stages of economic development. Then, individual wage data are brought directly to capture the evolution of high-skilled and low-skilled wages across industries in two EU...

Traditionally, Spain has been a destination for people coming from rich European countries. However, at the end of the last century, the pattern of these immigrant flows changed. The Spanish economic growth model, based on the construction industry, attracted large numbers of immigrants...

Structured investment funds showed an important growth in the mutual fund industry. We analyze this type of fund’s demand using the experimental methodology which gives us perfect control over the characteristics of the funds and the information provided to the investor. Different types of...

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology under emissions trading. Our experimental design mimics an industry with small asymmetric polluting firms regulated by different schemes of tradable permits. We consider three...

This paper aims at exploring the links between firms'­ exporting and importing activities in Egyptian firms. With this aim, a panel dataset of 554 Egyptian manufacturing firms that contains yearly data over the period from 2003 to 2007 is used to estimate the probability of exporting...

The purpose of a product is to satisfy the needs of the people that are going to acquire it. In order to do so, it has to incorporate characteristics and features that fulfill a series of requirements set by users' expectations and external conditions. In this essay, we are focusing on the...