This paper deals with the implications of natural resources for the conduct of economic policies and the role and design of institutions in resource‐rich countries. The paper briefly reviews the experience of a few resource‐rich countries, highlighting the successes of those that have done...

This paper investigates whether the higher prevalence of South multinational enterprises (MNEs) in risky developing countries may be explained by the experience that they have acquired of poor institutional quality at home. We confirm the intuition provided by our analytical model by empirically...

Since the introduction of the HIPC Initiative in the early 2000s, indebted LICs had to show a decent governance performance before their debts were forgiven. We discuss the hypothesis that during the follow-up, Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), the World Bank has refrained from this...

The effects of ethnic geography, i.e., the distribution of ethnic groups across space, on economic, political and social outcomes are not well understood. We develop a novel index of ethnic segregation that takes both ethnic and spatial distances between individuals into account. Importantly, we...

This article is in three parts. First, it briefly describes the contribution of natural resources to economic growth around the world, pondering the question whether an abundance of natural resources is a blessing or a curse. Second, an attempt is made to provide a glimpse of recent empirical...

In this paper we analyze the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of the shadow economies. The framework developed predicts a negative relationship between the degree of direct democracy and the size of the shadow economy. Countries where direct democratic...

The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

The foreign debts of the European countries are at the core of the current crises. Generally, the crises are attributed to government budget deficits in excess of the values stated in the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP)/Maastricht treaty. Proposals for reform generally involve increasing the...