infonet-economy

We provide evidence that firms fail to properly adjust for risk in their valuation of investment projects, and that this behavior leads to value-destroying investment decisions. If managers tend to use a single discount rate within firms, we expect conglomerates to underinvest in relatively safe divisions, and to overinvest in risky ones. We measure division relative risk as the...

The paper explores the evolution of export diversification patterns along the economic development path. Using a large database with 156 countries over 19 years at the HS6 level of disaggregation (4,991 product lines), we look for action at the intensive and extensive margins. We find a hump-shaped pattern of export diversification similar to what Imbs and Wacziarg (2003) found for...

Once again the Doha Round negotiators are struggling to reach an agreement, this time by mid-December 2011 on a “plan B” package that would give increased market access to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) under simplified rules of origin (RoO). We argue that in spite of some simplifying reforms by the EU and the US, administrative costs associated with establishing origin will...

Cette thèse a pour but de développer un cadre théorique pour penser la distribution des ressources socio-économiques. Prenant l'occasion d'un parcours théorique critique, cette thèse cherche à montrer que seule une juste distribution adéquate qui prendrait la forme de l' "égalité des dotations initiales" serait optimale pour répondre aux questionnements qui...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the conditions under which referendum campaigns have an impact on voting choices. Based on a model of opinion formation that integrates both campaign effects and partisan effects, we argue that campaign effects vary according to the context of the popular vote (size and type of conflict among the party elite and intensity and direction of the...

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argued that people in a just society would have rights to some forms of personal property, whatever the best way to organise the economy. Without being explicit about it, he also seems to have believed that protection for at least some forms of privacy are included in the Basic Liberties, to which all are entitled. Thus, Rawls assumes that people are...