Trust and foreign ownership: Evidence from intra‐European foreign direct investments

We use a novel firm‐level dataset to test whether trust affects the volume and the ownership structure FDI across Europe. Our methodology deals with the endogeneity of trust from the investor to the recipient country. We expect such a trust measure to affect investment decisions, and the associated knowledge capital, differently across types of foreign investors. In particular, this effect is expected to be stronger for industrial investors who possess transferable knowledge capital. The data confirm our predictions. Higher trust increases the number and volume of FDIs, but also the probability of co‐investing with a partner from the recipient country.     

Effects of Currency Devaluations on the Economic Growth in Developing Countries: The Role of Foreign Currency-Denominated Debt

Assuming that a developing country has to denominate its debts in the currencies of the principal creditor countries, how is the country??s economic performance affected when currency devaluation occurs? The aim of this paper is to prove that devaluation can be contractionary and that its occurrence can be the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assuming credit constraints on firms?? borrowing capacity and nominal price rigidities, a sharp change in the value of the domestic currency leads to an increase in the real costs of foreign currency-denominated debt. Hence, firms?? profits as well as their borrowing capacity decrease, provoking a drop in future investment and output. Moreover, expectations about future output can alone trigger a currency devaluation, confirming the initial expectations in a self-fulfilling way. Finally, it is discussed in an empirical analysis the impact of devaluation on the economic growth in a sample of five countries.     

The Role of Stakeholders in Sustainability Reporting Assurance

The main purpose of this exploratory analysis is to understand whether, based on evidence gathered from international best practices selected among corporations which adopt the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines in sustainability reporting (SR), stakeholders are significantly consulted and involved—as international literature would indicate—by assurance providers, during assurance processes of SR. We aim at verifying if this practice—known as stakeholder assurance—is in fact widespread in SR assurance by carrying out empirical research, through content analysis, into a sample of 161 assurance statements of international corporations, in order to test characteristics of any stakeholder assurance implemented.     

Status, the Distribution of Wealth, and Growth

We analyze a simple model of endogenous growth in which individuals care about both consumption and their rank in the distribution of wealth. We show that the steady-growth rate of the economy increases with both the strength of the status-seeking motive and the initial equality of the wealth distribution. Contrary to the basic model of endogenous growth, the equilibrium growth rate is not necessarily smaller than in the social optimum, and we identify the circumstances under which the two coincide.     

Steuerpolitik in finanzkritischen Zeiten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The efficient side of progressive income taxation

This paper examines allocative properties of progressive income taxation when individuals care about their relative income. It shows that introducing a progressive income tax can yield a Pareto improvement if pre-tax income is evenly distributed. Implementing undistorted choices of working hours requires a progressive tax schedule, and the optimal degree of progressivity decreases with pre-tax income inequality.     

On the optimality of privacy in sequential contracting

This paper studies the exchange of information between two principals who contract sequentially with the same agent, as in the case of a buyer who purchases from multiple sellers. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the downstream level of trade, (b) the agent's valuations are positively correlated, and (c) preferences in the downstream relationship are separable, then it is optimal for the upstream principal to offer the agent full privacy. On the contrary, when any of these conditions is violated, there exist preferences for which disclosure is strictly optimal, even if the downstream principal does not pay for the information. We also examine the effects of disclosure on welfare and show that it does not necessarily reduce the agent's surplus in the two relationships and in some cases may even yield a Pareto improvement.     

Does Social Capital Reduce Moral Hazard? A Network Model for Non‐Life Insurance Demand*

We study the effect of social capital in an environment in which formal, marketed insurance contracts coexist with informal agreements. We show that in the absence of peer monitoring and social pressure, non‐marketed contracts crowd out formal ones due to moral hazard. We prove, by means of an equilibrium concept typical of the network literature, that social capital can reduce moral hazard in informal agreements. We then show that under certain conditions, social capital increases the demand for marketed insurance contracts. The theoretical model we outline provides us clear guidance to measure social capital in a provincial‐level data set. The empirical model, which is estimated controlling for panel and spatial structure, supports our claim that social capital increases the demand for non‐life insurance.     

Export restraints in a model of trade with capital accumulation

This paper examines the impact of voluntary export restraints (VERs) in an international duopoly modeled as a differential game. With a Ramsey capital accumulation dynamics, the game admits multiple steady states, and a VER cannot be ‘voluntarily’ employed by the foreign firm in case of Cournot behavior in demand substitutes. Hence, the dynamic framework confirms the results of the VERs literature with static interaction in output levels. In the case of price behavior, the adoption of an export restraint may increase the profits of both firms if products are substitutes and the steady state is ‘market-driven’. However, contrary to the acquired wisdom based upon the static approach, the dynamic analysis also admits an equilibrium outcome, identified by the Ramsey golden rule, where the incentive to adopt a VER is ruled out, irrespective of whether firms are quantity- or price-setters.