Discrimination has been documented against women in Muslim-majority countries. Constitutions differ among Muslim-majority countries. By using women's rights indicators and exploiting cross-country variation, we find that discrimination against women is more pronounced in countries where Islam is...

This study experimentally investigates gender quotas in light of peer review. We investigate competitions with and without gender quotas and a peer review process that allows for sabotage. Our findings show that the possibility of peer sabotage renders the gender quota ineffective in encouraging...

This paper uses the European Commission's Consumer Survey to assess whether inflation expectations have converged and whether inflation uncertainty has diminished following the introduction of the Euro in Europe. Consumers' responses to the survey suggest that inflation expectations depend more...

This paper analyzes the relationship between the size of an economic union and the degree of policy centralization. We consider a political economy setting in which elected representatives bargain about the degree of centralization within the union. In our model strategic delegation affects the...

We develop multivariate measures of synchronicity and co-movement of business cycles. In addition to synchronicity, the co-movement measure takes differences between cycle amplitudes into account that have been overlooked in most previous studies. We apply the new measures to the euro area....

Using an extended data set of EU countries ranging from 1971-2006 and relevant econometric methods, we investigate the economic, political, and institutional determinants of government deficits in the EU. The results show a strong opportunistic behaviour of policymakers which leads to political...

This paper formulates a dynamic Random Coefficient Model (RCM) to consider a set of popular determinants of public deficits in the EU-15 over the period 1971-2006, both at a country-specific level and from a population-wide perspective. Although the extent of government deficits and debt has...

We use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to evaluate the robustness of determinants of economic growth in a new dataset of 255 European regions in the 1995-2005 period. We use three different specifications based on (1) the cross-section of regions, (2) the cross-section of regions with country...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

Ten Central European countries became members of the European Union in the years 2004-2007. They constitute 20% of the EU's total population; and even though their economic output is much lower, it rises dynamically. New members' impact on the EU policies has nevertheless been limited. This is...