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Ever since it entered into force in 1995, the directive on unfair contract terms 93/13/EEC (UTD) has been considered of little significance in Swedish national law. The Swedish courts have, for the most part, used other instruments to deal with and remedy unfair terms. Even though rulings from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) indicate that the UTD should be of great importance for assessments in Swedish courts, there are hardly any traces of such a significance regarding either individual agreements or the handling of unfair terms in civil law. It could be said that there are two partly incompatible views concerning how consumer protection should be achieved. The strategy in the Nordic countries has been to protect consumers through actively working ombudsmen, by lowering thresholds for consumers’ access to court, and through a dynamic modification rule. Many of the EU directives that have required Swedish and Nordic law to be changed have primarily revolved around obligations to provide adequate and detailed information to consumers so that they can exercise their rights and make informed choices, paired with — from a Nordic point of view — a quite rigid approach regarding the consequences if these obligations are not followed. The Nordic approach rarely leads to absolutes in terms of valid or void, but is based on assessments in every individual case if the results are suitable, fair, and necessary. There are fundamental differences in approach to the achievement of consumer protection, and in opinion on how important foreseeability and the free movement of goods and services are in relation to the interests of the individual consumer. Currently, there are no signs that the Swedish legislator has any intention to change or amend s 36 Contracts Act. The courts are also quite hesitant to use the UTD in preference to the national approach to modify unfair terms. Increased pressure from the EU, together with new case law from the CJEU, may result in

This thesis is a research into the relationship between performance and sales of new financial contracts of financial products providers in the employer’s market. This thesis is written in collaboration with IG&H Consulting. Combining the performance scores given by advisors on financial providers and the production of new contracts over the past two years, a logistic regression is fitted with a selected group of performance variables. The results show a significant positive effect of the performance on the production of new financial contracts. The model predicts a potential growth in the number of contracts when there is an improvement in the performance of providers in the eyes of advisors. The performance of the model is not fully satisfying but it is a good starting point. It can be ameliorated in the future with the collection of contract specific information., Applied Mathematics | Financial Engineering

We demonstrate how an incumbent producer of commodities can use cash-settled derivatives contracts to deter entry and extract rents from a potential competitor. By selling more derivatives than total demand, the producer commits to low prices and forces the entrant to price low upon entry. By setting a high upfront derivatives price, the producer can extract the consumer's gains from those low prices. This exclusionary scheme becomes more difficult when the buyer becomes more risk averse and with multiple buyers.

Many commodities are traded on both a spot market and a derivative market. We show that an incumbent producer may use purely financial derivatives to extract rent from a potential entrant. It can do so by selling derivatives to a large buyer for more than his expected production level. This exclusionary scheme comes at the cost of inefficiently deterring entry and creating too much risk for the buyer. We further show that it can still be used when contracts are offered anonymously through a broker, as the incumbent can signal its identity by adjusting the contracting terms.

Many commodities are traded on both a spot market and a derivative market. We show that an incumbent producer may use purely financial derivatives to extract rent from a potential entrant. It can do so by selling derivatives to a large buyer for more than his expected production level. This exclusionary scheme comes at the cost of inefficiently deterring entry and creating too much risk for the buyer. We further show that it can still be used when contracts are offered anonymously through a broker, as the incumbent can signal its identity by adjusting the contracting terms.

Many commodities are traded on both a spot market and a derivative market. We show that an incumbent producer may use purely financial derivatives to extract rent from a potential entrant. It can do so by selling derivatives to a large buyer for more than his expected production level. This exclusionary scheme comes at the cost of inefficiently deterring entry and creating too much risk for the buyer. We further show that it can still be used when contracts are offered anonymously through a broker, as the incumbent can signal its identity by adjusting the contracting terms.

Many commodities are traded on both a spot market and a derivative market. We show that an incumbent producer may use financial derivatives to extract rent from a potential entrant. The incumbent can indeed sell insurance to a large buyer to commit himself to compete aggressively in the spot market and drive the price down for the entrant. It can do so by selling derivatives for more than his expected production level, i.e. by taking a speculative position. This comes at the cost of inefficiently deterring entry.

We examine the effect of trust on financial investment and contracting decisions in a micro-economic environment where trust is exogenous. Using hand-collected data on European venture capital, we show that the Eurobarometer measure of trust among nations significantly affects investment decisions. This holds even after controlling for investor and company fixed effects, geographic distance, information and transaction costs. The national identity of venture capital firms’ individual partners further contributes to the effect of trust. Education and work experience reduce the effect of trust but do not eliminate it. We also examine the relationship between trust and sophisticated contracts involving contingent control rights and find that, even after controlling for endogeneity, they are complements, not substitutes.

This paper contributes to the debate on optimal bankruptcy reform by providing a set of results that challenge the wisdom that "soft" bankruptcy codes have necessarily positive effects. The model hinges on the key idea that "soft" bankruptcy allows a poor performing entrepreneur to renegotiate the terms of the initial contract with a lender. In the presence of moral hazard, the optimal arrangement requires the hampering of project's continuation as punishment for poor performance. However, if the lender can increase recovery rates in bankruptcy such pun- ishment is not renegotiation-proof. Clearly, this exacerbates the agency problem and creates a tension between ex-post and ex-ante effciency that may impede the implementation of long- term projects.

The objective of this paper is to identify the role of memory in repeated contracts with moral hazard in financial intermediation. We use the database we have built containing the contracts signed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development EBRD between 1991 and 2003. Our framework is a standard setting of repeated moral hazard. After having controlled for the adverse selection component, we are able to prove that client reputation is the discrimination device according to which the bank fixes the amount of credit for the established clients. Our results unambiguously isolate the effect of memory in the bank's lending decisions.

Questo volume offre una rappresentazione accurata dell’architettura e delle diverse funzioni dei sistemi finanziari, sistemi che grazie all’elevato tasso di innovazione finanziaria che li caratterizza risultano sempre più articolati e integrati tra loro. Sono poi esaminate, nella prospettiva delle imprese e delle famiglie utenti di servizi finanziari, le caratteristiche economiche e tecniche dei principali strumenti e servizi bancari, mobiliari, assicurativi e previdenziali. Il testo si caratterizza per il costante riferimento al sistema finanziario italiano e a quello europeo.

Questo volume offre una rappresentazione accurata dell’architettura e delle diverse funzioni dei sistemi finanziari, sistemi che grazie all’elevato tasso di innovazione finanziaria che li caratterizza risultano sempre più articolati e integrati tra loro. Sono poi esaminate, nella prospettiva delle imprese e delle famiglie utenti di servizi finanziari, le caratteristiche economiche e tecniche dei principali strumenti e servizi bancari, mobiliari, assicurativi e previdenziali. Il testo si caratterizza per il costante riferimento al sistema finanziario italiano e a quello europeo.

This paper investigate the interaction between financial structure, liquidation values and product market equilibrium. Liquidation values depend on how many firms are liquidated, and therefore on the industry equilibrium of capital structures and of technology choices. We show that firms using a technology with high liquidation value issue less debt than those with low liquidation bvalue even if these ones may be inefficiently liquidated. With respect to the equilibrium in the industry we obrtain that even if in equilibrium all firms use the same technology, firms will use widely different capital structures.

This paper investigate the interaction between financial structure, liquidation values and product market equilibrium. Liquidation values depend on how many firms are liquidated, and therefore on the industry equilibrium of capital structures and of technology choices. We show that firms using a technology with high liquidation value issue less debt than those with low liquidation bvalue even if these ones may be inefficiently liquidated. With respect to the equilibrium in the industry we obrtain that even if in equilibrium all firms use the same technology, firms will use widely different capital structures.