Do financial derivatives enhance or impede innovation? We aim to answer this question by examining the relationship between equity options markets and standard measures of firm innovation. Our baseline results show that firms with more options trading activity generate more patents and patent citations per dollar of R&D invested. We then investigate how more active options markets affect firms' innovation strategy. Our results suggest that firms with greater trading activity pursue a more creative, diverse and risky innovation strategy. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and show that options appear to mitigate managerial career concerns that would induce managers to take actions that boost short-term performance measures. Finally, using several econometric specifications that try to account for the potential endogeneity of options trading, we argue that the positive effect of options trading on firm innovation is causal.

Recent events in international financial markets have revived the scientific interest in conceivable institutional alternatives to prevailing monetary arrangements. In the essays reprinted in this book, the author critically examines some of the more influential arguments which have been made in favour of decentralization in banking.

The purpose of this edition is to provide an English translation of three essays about Tomás de Mercado’s book, Deals and Contracts of Merchants and Traders. This translation has been made from the 1569 edition of the book published in Salamanca. The book was later the object of new editions and it was expanded by two more chapters, with an Italian translation appearing in 1571. However, an English edition had never been made before. The 1569 edition is composed of four Books: the first dedicated to merchants and their contracts, the second to currency and loans, the third to usury and the fourth to the question of the obligation of restitution when a reprehensible action is committed.