In the last decade the ownership structure of Australia's life insurance industry has undergone a fundamental change. Traditionally, the sector had been dominated by a group of large mutual associations which had historically been the market leaders. In the space of less than a decade, this form...

We apply the set up of limited commitment model to empirically test the role of informal risk-sharing networks using panel data on informal credit transactions from rural Ethiopia. The empirical estimates provide convincing evidence for the belief that enforcement problem limits the direct role...

Privatization in Estonia has produced varied ownership configurations. This enables hypotheses on the productivity effects of different ownership forms to be tested. Findings are based on fixed effects production function models and are estimated using a large, random sample of firms. Depending...

We start out from the hypothesis that limited government leads to low uncertainty and low transaction costs. If political institutions affect the degree of uncertainty and transaction costs, we formally show they should affect the steady state level of income per capita. The impact of...

In this study, we use two representative surveysto investigate how competition and cooperation relate on the individual level and whether (and how) they associate with educational attainment. Our first result is that the correlation between competition and cooperation is positive and...

A life-cycle growth model is used to investigate the quantitative impact of gradually converting the financing of social security from pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) to full funding. The magnitudes of the losses and gains that particular age cohorts will experience under alternative speeds of conversion...

In this study, we use two representative surveysto investigate how competition and cooperation relate on the individual level and whether (and how) they associate with educational attainment. Our first result is that the correlation between competition and cooperation is positive and...