Credit rating agencies (CRAs) very often have been criticized for announcing inaccurate credit ratings and are suspected of being exposed to conflicts of interest. Despite these objections CRAs remained largely unregulated. Based on Pagano & Immordino (2007), we study the optimal regulation of...

Many practitioners point out that the speculative profits of institutional traders arc eroded by the difficulty in gauging the price impact of their trades. In this paper. we develop a model of strategic trading where speculators face such a dilemma because of incomplete information about...

In transition and developing countries, we observe rather high levels of corruption even if they have democratic political systems. This is surprising from a political economy perspective, as the majority of people generally suffers from high corruption levels. Our model is based on the fact...

This paper investigates the impact of emigration on the political choice regarding the size of the welfare state. Mobility has two countervailing effects: the political participation effect and the tax base effect. With emigration, the composition of the constituency changes. This increases the...

The hallmark of the recent development and growth literature is a quest to identify institutions that explain a significant portion of the observed differences in living standards across countries. Empirical work in the area focuses almost exclusively on either the global sample or on developing...

In this paper the term ‘globalisation’ means the international integration of nationally organised markets in conjunction with increasing cross-country flows of factors of production. According to this globalisation has been under way for centuries. Globalisation is not a completely...