Recent research in international economics highlights the role of interdependencies of investment decisions and sales of multinational firms. Previous work focused on and provided evidence for aggregate flows or stocks of foreign direct investment, showing that interdependence declines in...

Anglo-Saxon countries have been successful in the 1990s concerning labor market performance compared to the former role models Germany and Japan. This reversal in relative economic performance might be related to idiosyncracies in financial markets with bank-based financial markets as in Germany...

In recent years, sustainability has represented one of the most important policy goals explored in the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) literature. But related hypotheses, performance measures and results continue to present a challenge. The present paper contributes to this ongoing literature...

Using annual data for the period 1992-2012, this paper examines trade flows between China and its main trade partners in Asia, North America and Europe, and whether increasing trade has led to industrial structural adjustment and changes in China’s trade patterns. The analysis is based on both...

We use a controlled laboratory experiment with and without overlapping generations to study the emergence of public debt. Public debt is chosen by popular vote, pays for public goods, and is repaid with general taxes. With a single generation, public debt is accumulated prudently, never leading...

Privatisation, i.e. the transfer of ownership and control of state-owned enterprises, is a worldwide phenomenon. Which political, economic and institutional factors are shaping this process? This paper addresses the issue presenting new evidence from a sample of 49 countries. From an empirical...

We examine whether Swiss federal fiscal policy was sustainable over the period from 1900 to 2002. We perform unit root and cointegration tests for federal revenues and expenditures, taking into account a structural shift in the budgetary process related to World War II. We find sustainability...

We investigate the existence of Granger-causality between current account and government budget balances over the period 1970-2007, for different EU and OECD country groupings. We use the panel-data approach of Kónya (2006), which is based on SUR systems and Wald tests with country specific...