This paper studies the impact of recent changes in second pension pillars of three Central and Eastern European Countries on the deficit and implicit debt of their full pension systems. The paper seeks to answer the following questions: what is the impact on the sustainability of Poland's...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

In a major setback for the EU, only two of four Eastern Partnership countries actually initialed Association Agreements at the Vilnius Summit in November 2013. This paper asks what went wrong and what can be done about it. Using a gravity model to estimate the effects of deep and shallow free...

The paper analyzes the relation between monetary uncertainty and government incentives to implement economic reforms that reduce structural distortions and make economies more flexible. It is shown that uncertainty about the central bank's reaction function leads to more reforms. I relate this...

In order to overcome the underprovision of global public goods various different policy approaches have been proposed. In the climate policy arena, international transfers are frequently seen as an effective means to raise the provision of the global public good ‘climate change mitigation'....

This paper empirically studies the impact of decentralization on foreign aid effectiveness. For this purpose, we examine a commonly used empirical growth model, considering aid modality as well as different measures of political and fiscal decentralization. Our panel estimations reveal that...

This paper explores the role of information transmission in explaining donors' choice between project aid and budget support. Budget support increases the involvement of recipient governments in the decision-making process and can thus be an example of a “delegation-scheme.” Conversely,...

A key issue in development economics is the explanation of core-periphery patterns around the world. Combining this issue with that of analyzing unilateral transfers (e.g. foreign aid) points in the direction of the use of New Economic Geography (NEG) models which, so far, has not been done...

Countries can reduce global emissions by reducing own consumption since they are linked to the total value of consumption world wide. Two effects are at issue: a utility loss from forgone consumption and a utility gain from lowered temperature change. It is thus unclear whether own country...

The paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of a donor's choice of the composition of unrestricted and in-kind/restricted transfers to a recipient and how this composition is adjusted in response to changes in the moral hazard behavior of the recipient. In-kind or restricted...