The Impact of Equity-preferences on the Stability of International Environmental Agreements

This paper uses a coalition formation model to explore how equity considerations affect countries’ cooperation on global environmental issues, e.g. on climate change. When developing countries are exempted from obligations to reduce their emissions, I find that opening them for abatement projects financed by industrialized countries changes the incentives to cooperate in a way which can increase emissions and decrease welfare. Equity- concerns in industrialized countries regarding the difference between their per capita emission levels and those of developing countries lead to increased abatement but do not qualitatively change the incentives to cooperate. Inequality-aversion with respect to differences to abatement targets across industrialized countries generally induces larger coalition sizes and stricter abatement. Here, the inclusion of developing countries improves upon the prospects of cooperation.     

Analyst Recommendations and Regulation: Scopes for European Policy Makers to Enhance Investor Protection

Investors rely on analyst recommendations when making investment decisions. Over the last few years, however, sell-side analysts have caught the attention of the supervisory authorities given their vulnerability to numerous conflicts of interest. In this paper, we empirically examine relevant regulatory measures that have an impact upon analysts’ activities, namely the market abuse directive and markets in financial instruments directive. We find that European regulators have primarily focused on mitigating conflicts of interest. However, to establish an environment of more sophisticated investor protection additional regulatory effort is required. Therefore, in this paper, we provide related empirical evidence and discuss proposals to correct regulatory shortcomings in order to strengthen investor protection in the European Union.     

Rationally mispriced assets in equilibrium

We present a simple model of trading in a financial market where agents are asymmetrically informed and information is transmitted through the price system. We characterize the equilibrium for this economy and show that ‘rational mispricing’ of assets occurs if the price system fails to reveal the insider information accurately. It is argued that the communication of wrong information through equilibrium prices is compatible with full rationality on the part of the investors and may explain deviations from the efficient markets hypothesis.     

Can social spending cushion the inequality effect of globalization?

This paper examines whether social spending cushions the effect of globalization on within‐country inequality. Using information on disposable and market income inequality and data on overall social spending, and health and education spending from the ILO and the World Bank/WHO, we analyze whether social spending moderates the association between economic globalization and inequality. The results confirm that economic globalization—especially economic flows—associates with higher income inequality, an effect driven by non‐OECD countries. Health spending is strongly associated with lower inequality, but we find no robust evidence that any kind of social spending negatively moderates the association between economic globalization and inequality.     

Measures of Human Capital and Nonlinearities in Economic Growth

In this paper we study the relationship between human capital accumulation and economic growth using various measures of human capital frequently employed by researchers. We use semiparametric estimation techniques to uncover any nonlinearities that may exist. Using mean years of schooling measures of human capital we find a nonlinear effect on economic growth. There seem to be important differences in the growth effect of educational attainment by gender and level of education. Enrollment rates do not yield a nonlinear effect.