This paper presents a model of nations where culturally heterogeneous agents vote on the optimal level of public spending. Larger nations benefit from increasing returns in the provision of public goods, but bear the costs of greater cultural heterogeneity. This tradeoff induces agents'...

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union (EU). However, a large number of languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. On the other hand, the reduction of the number of languages...

This paper applies the Growth Diagnostics framework and attempts to identify the binding constraints to economic growth in Georgia. While many policies potentially promote economic growth in practice only policies that relax the binding constraint do so. In contrast, policies that relax...

In this paper, we investigate the evolution of office market risks and property prices in Central and Eastern European (CEE) cities. We developed a methodology assessing if office property markets have been accurately valuated in CEE cities, using as a benchmark the past evolution of office...

This paper addresses the fundamental question of whether, in a comparative-advantage context, the gains from trade will be greater when the differences between trading countries are greater. Such a presumption is established. The paper then discusses circumstances that could cause the...

We argue that inter-country comparisons of income poverty based on poverty lines uniformly reflecting the costs of the basic requirements of human beings are superior to the existing money-metric approaches. In this exercise, we implement a uniform approach to income poverty assessment based on...

This paper draws attention to inconsistencies in estimating simple monetary policy rules and their implications for policy advice. We simulate a macroeconomic model with a backward reaction function similar to Taylor (1993). We estimate different versions of a policy rule, using these simulated...

This paper attempts to provide a context for the discussion of possible trade and investment cooperation is East Asia. First I describe the present role in the world economy of regional cooperative arrangements. These seem to be concerned primarily with foreign investment, secondarily with...

This paper proposes a 2-country 3-region economic geography model that can account for the most salient stylized facts experienced by Eastern European transition economies during the 1990s. In contrast to the existing literature, which has favored technological explanations, trade liberalization...

In this paper we propose a two-good model of price competition in an oligopoly where the two goods can be complements or substitutes and each retailer has a captive consumer base `a la Burdett and Judd (1983). We find that the symmetric Nash Equilibrium of this model features atomless pricing...