Business groups in emerging markets perform better than unaffiliated firms. One explanation is that business groups substitute some functions of missing institutions, for example, enforcing contracts. We investigate this by setting up a model where firms within the business group are connected...

Over time and across countries, researchers have noted frequent and mostly unexplained gender differences in the levels of support for policies of free or freer trade: women tend to be less favorable toward policies of liberalizing trade than men. Using an economic security explanation based...

We examine the determinants of FDI stocks of ‘old’ EU-members in ten accession countries. Our partial adjustment framework results in a dynamic panel data analysis. In addition to the traditional variables, such as market potential and unit labour costs, we find institutional development to...

The main objective of the following article is to present the key findings of the existent research in the field of the influence the introduction of the euro had on the trade of the member states of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The intention of this article is also to inspire further...

We use partisan and opportunistic political business cycle (“PBC”) considerations to develop and test a framework for explaining election-period changes in credit spreads for developing country sovereign bonds. Pre-election bond spread trends are significantly linked both to the partisan...

We use partisan and opportunistic political business cycle (“PBC”) considerations to develop a framework for explaining election-period decisions by credit rating agencies (“agencies”) publishing developing country sovereign risk-ratings (“ratings”). We test six hypotheses derived...

We use the stochastic frontier approach to estimate the impact of firm characteristics on investment decisions of Indian firms during the 1997-2006 period. The use of the stochastic frontier approach allows us to define the (unobserved) optimum investment that is consistent with a firm's...

The paper analyzes investment behavior of industrial enterprises in the period immediately following price and foreign trade liberalization in the Czech Republic. It also focuses on the effect of "soft" macroeconomic environment on the microeconomic decisions. A dynamic investment function with...

This paper first describes the major concerns associated with SWFs, mainly revolving around state ownership and lack of transparency. It then focuses on the National Fund for the Future of Kazakhstan (the “oil fund”, or NOF) and Samruk Kazyna (SK), the holding company for state owned...

Microfinance institutions are important, particularly in developing countries, because they expand the frontier of financial intermediation by providing loans to those traditionally excluded from formal financial markets. This paper presents the first systematic statistical examination of the...