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Risk sharing with the monarch: contingent debt and excusable defaults in the age of Philip II, 1556–1598

Contingent sovereign debt can create important welfare gains. Nonetheless, there is almost no issuance today. Using hand-collected archival data, we examine the first known case of large-scale use of state-contingent sovereign debt in history. Philip II of Spain entered into hundreds of contracts whose value and due date depended on verifiable, exogenous events such as the arrival of...

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English / 01/03/2014

Recreating the south sea bubble: lessons from an experiment in financial history

Major bubble episodes are rare events. In this paper, we examine what factors might cause some asset price bubbles to become very large. We recreate, in a laboratory setting, some of the specific institutional features investors in the South Sea Company faced in 1720. Several factors have been proposed as potentially contributing to one of the greatest periods of asset overvaluation...

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English / 01/03/2014

Leverage and beliefs: personal experience and risk taking in margin lending

What determines risk-bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets? Using unique archival data on collateralized lending, we show that personal experience can affect individual risk-taking and aggregate leverage. When an investor syndicate speculating in Amsterdam in 1772 went bankrupt, many lenders were exposed. In the end, none of them actually lost money....

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English / 01/03/2014

Does money illusion matter?: Reply

The data in Fehr and Tyran (FT, 2001) and Luba Petersen and Abel Winn (PW,2013) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money Illusion affects subjects' expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia after a negative shock but much less inertia after a positive shock. Thus PW provide a...

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English / 01/03/2014

Cyclical fiscal policy, credit constraints, and industry growth

What are the effects of cyclical fiscal policy on industry growth? We show that industries with a relatively heavier reliance on external finance or lower asset tangibility tend to grow faster (in terms of both value added and of labor productivity growth) in countries that implement fiscal policies that are more countercyclical. We reach this conclusion using Rajan and Zingales׳s (...

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English / 01/03/2014

Treatment evaluation with multiple outcome periods under endogeneity and attrition

This paper develops a nonparametric methodology for treatment evaluation with multiple outcome periods under treatment endogeneity and missing outcomes. We use instrumental variables, pre-treatment characteristics, and short-term (or intermediate) outcomes to identify the average treatment effect on the outcomes of compliers (the subpopulation whose treatment reacts on the instrument...

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English / 01/03/2014

Lending to the borrower from hell: Debt, taxes, and default in the age of Philip II

Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case - the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the...

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English / 04/02/2014

The causal effect of house prices on mortgage demand and mortgage supply

We identify the causal effect of house prices on mortgage demand and supply in Switzerland by exploiting exogenous shocks to immigration and thereby to house prices. Detailed micro data allow us to observe multiple offers for each mortgage request. We find a 1% increase in house prices to raise the requested mortgage amount by 0.52%. Due to positive feedback effects, the entire...

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English / 01/02/2014

Drug-specific laterality effects on frontal lobe activation of atomoxetine and methylphenidate in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder boys during working memory

Background The catecholamine reuptake inhibitors methylphenidate (MPH) and atomoxetine (ATX) are the most common treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compares the neurofunctional modulation and normalization effects of acute doses of MPH and ATX within medication-naive ADHD boys during working memory (WM).

Method A total of 20 medication-...

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English / 01/02/2014

Target Capital Structure and Adjustment Speed in Asia

Studies on the capital structure of Asian corporations are rare, and most of those studies support different explanations of financing decisions compared to the ones accepted for the USA and Europe. We test relationships that are typical of the Tradeoff Theory and the Pecking Order Theory, and analyze the speed of adjustment toward target capital structures for 1239 companies with...

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English / 01/02/2014

The promise of microfinance and women's empowerment: what does the evidence say?

The microfinance revolution has transformed access to financial services for low-income populations worldwide. As a result, it has become one of the most talked-about innovations in global development in recent decades. However, its expansion has not been without controversy. While many hailed it as a way to end world poverty and promote female empowerment, others condemned it as a...

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English / 01/02/2014

Insights from Swiss Pension Systems

This chapter takes Switzerland's much praised three-pillar system to illustrate some of the challenges pension system reforms face in an aging society. It shows that policymakers are confronted by some individuals with behavioral anomalies, and by others who strategically exploit the system The trade-off between providing incentives and adequate retirement income limits policy...

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English / 23/01/2014

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