Since Jean Monnet conceived the Coal and Steel Community, free trade has successfully prevented serious conflicts in Europe between democratically governed States with market economies. After six countries established the European Community, this principle has been extended successfully to its...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between unemployment and consumption. We study this relationship with panel data on households in five countries: Spain and Italy (the South), and Germany, Britain, and the US (the North). Our empirical results indicate that an increase in the duration...

Edwards and Ogilvie (2008) dispute the empirical basis for the view (Greif, e.g., 1989, 1994, 2006) that multilateral reputation mechanism mitigated agency problems among the eleventh-century Maghribi traders. They assert that the relations among merchants and agents were law-based. This paper...

This paper investigates the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and its robustness for 28 countries of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) over the recent period. Our methodology relies on four recent estimation methods for non-stationary panel data and includes four pollutants...

In an interconnected world, economic and political interests inevitably reach beyond national borders. Since policy choices generate external economic and political costs, foreign state and non-state actors have an interest in inflencing policy actions in other sovereign countries to their...

Under what conditions can the European Neighbourhood Policy achieve one of its main objectives: to resolve conflicts in the European Union's neighbourhood? In the spirit of Montesquieu and Monnet, the basic hypothesis of the EU is that closer economic integration encourages governments to take...

We study whether national leaders' foreign education influences their foreign policy, measured by voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). We hypothesize that “affinity” - pre-existing or developed while studying abroad - makes leaders with foreign education more likely...

We study whether national leaders' foreign education influences their foreign policy, measured by voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). We hypothesize that "affinity" - pre-existing or developed while studying abroad - makes leaders with foreign education more likely to...

Import regulations are globally the most prevalent form of intervention in international trade. The regulations should, under rules of the WTO, protect consumers and the environment but can be used to protect producers. We investigate the ambiguity of intent. We set out a model that when applied...