In this paper we investigate the link between entrepreneurship and financial constraints. We develop a dynamic partial equilibrium model of an individual utility maximization that predicts that the person is more likely to start her business when financial constraints are eased. We test this...

We study the degree of agglomeration of acquisition activity within clusters of temporal, geographic and industrial proximity based on almost 600,000 individual transactions. The findings indicate that significant clustering occurs in time and across industries, while the results on geographic...

The paper seeks to add to the existing literature on aggregate and private savings by focusing on transition economies. We use panel data over the period 1989-1998 and estimate a fixed-effects model. In Central Eastern European Countries, aggregate and private savings are driven by almost the...

An unexpected increase in life expectancy has implications for private pensions (annuities). These can be offset by reducing pension payments, cross-subsidization of the pension payments, risk-taking of insurance companies or combining these policies. An empirical study of the German market of...

Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have a skewed distribution of outcomes. In a number of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate skewness or ignore it completely. Participants...

Terrorist incidents exert a negative, albeit generally short-lived, impact on markets and equity returns. Given the integration of global financial markets, mega-terrorist events also have a high contagion potential with their shock waves being transmitted across countries and markets. This...

Using high-frequency transaction data for the three largest European markets (France, Germany and Italy), this paper documents the existence of an asymmetric relationship between market liquidity and trading imbalances: when quoted spreads rise (fall) and liquidity falls (increases) buy (sell)...

Are capital controls and macroprudential measures successful in achieving their objectives? Assessing their effectiveness is complicated by selection bias and endogeneity; countries which change their capital-flow management measures (CFMs) often share specific characteristics and are responding...

This study tests the hypothesis that the ongoing restructuring process in the European electricity sector, as well as market participants' adaptation to the new legal framework, have caused electricity wholesale day-ahead prices to converge towards arbitrage freeness. Using hourly cross-border...

Financial markets react to major political events. The two nuclear tests conducted by North Korea in 2006 and 2009 were a sober confirmation of the nuclear weapon capacity of this state with the concomitant potential security threat this posed for the stability of the greater region. We examine...