We estimate the political economy determinants of budget deficit forecast errors. Since the adoption of the Stability Pact, Eurozone governments have manipulated forecasts before elections. The political orientation and the institutional design of governments also affects the quality of forecasts.

The aim of this paper is to study the short and long-term fertility effects of mass violent conflict on different population sub-groups. The authors pool three nationally representative demographic and health surveys from before and after the genocide in Rwanda, identifying conflict exposure of...

The paper analyzes the network structure of international trade. Adapting a network approach developed in the physical sciences, we propose that international trade functions like a scale-free network. For each commodity group we calculate a characteristic parameter which reflects the structure...

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

The telecommunications in the 1990s witnessed an enormous worldwide round of Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A). This paper examines the innovation determinants of M&A activity and the consequences of M&A transactions on the technological potential and the innovation performance. We examine the...

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' liquid assets and uncertainty. We develop a partial equilibrium model of precautionary demand for liquid assets showing that firms alter their liquidity ratio in response to changes in either macroeconomic or...

This paper analyses post-war coping strategies by farm households in developing countries. The analysis is based on a portfolio model of activity choices in war-affected rural Sub- Saharan Africa. A case study using farm household survey data estimates the determinants of agricultural coping...

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of nonfinancial firms' leverage and macroeconomic uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts that as macroeconomic un-certainty increases the firm will decrease its optimal level of...

The relationship between land investment and tenure security is usually tested in land scarce but peaceful areas. This article examines instead the effects of land abundance and war for investment and tenure security. The paper demonstrates that war enhances land abundance. This implies that...

In the development literature, there exists no systematic study of external borrowing in post-conflict countries. We address this gap by analyzing statistical and case study evidence from three African countries. We find that many war-affected countries face rising debt arrears and deteriorating...