When it was launched in 2005, the European Union emissions trading system (EU ETS) was projected to have prices of around €30/ton CO2 and to be a cornerstone of the EU's climate policy. The reality was a cascade of falling prices, a ballooning privately held emissions bank, and a decade of low...

We use aggregated data from Facebook to study the structure of social networks across European regions. Social connectedness declines strongly in geographic distance and at country borders. Historical borders and unions — such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, and East/West...

The harmonized European value-added tax (VAT) is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the Dutch version, some 60% of the base is exempted, that is, not taxed on output but on inputs. This has serious...

This paper discusses lessons that other regions could learn from European Union's effort to implement carbon pricing through EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Our lessons are, first of all, that a cap-and-trade system like EU ETS is very helpful in guaranteeing a credible and binding...

According to the Phase IV (2021-2030) rules of the EU ETS, the total amount of emissions permits allocated to firms is not fixed but endogenous. This implies that a national climate policy that overlaps with the emission trading system can have an impact on total aggregate emissions. Roughly...

About 1.4 million refugees and irregular migrants arrived in Europe in 2015 and 2016. We model how refugees and irregular migrants are self-selected. Using unique datasets from the International Organization for Migration and Gallup World Polls, we provide the first large-scale evidence on...

This paper examines persistence, structural breaks and non-linearities in the case of five European stock market indices, namely the FTSE100 (UK), DAX30 (Germany), CAC40 (France), IBEX35 (Spain) and FTSE MIB40 (Italy), using fractional integration methods. The empirical results provide no...

This paper uses fractional integration techniques to examine the stochastic behaviour of high and low stock prices in Europe and then to test for the possible existence of long-run linkages between them by looking at the range, i.e., the difference between the two logged series. Specifically,...

With the new rules of the EU ETS, involving cancellation of allowances, cumulative emissions are no longer fixed but depending on the market outcome. Perino (2018) showed that additional abatement effort can reduce cumulative emissions if it occurs within a few years. This article shows that...

This paper uses panel data on over 200 regions of Europe to study the spatial distribution of UNESCO sites and the capacity of regional governments to conserve heritage, using new designations in the World Heritage List as a proxy. We test whether the location of a region matters by controlling...