This paper uses sovereign CDS spread changes and their volatilities as a proxy for the informational efficiency of the sovereign markets and persistency of country risks. Specifically, we apply semi-parametric and parametric methods to the sovereign CDSs of 10 eurozone countries to test the...

We distinguish exogenous liquidity, which corresponds to the variability of bid-ask spreads for usual-sized transactions, from endogenous liquidity, which we interpret as the impact of liquidity on market prices when liquidating larger positions. Endogenous liquidity measures the risk that the...

Who benefits from the evasion of value added taxes (VAT)? Using a reform that enforced VAT on previously non-compliant large retailers in Armenia, we estimate a onethird passthrough of the tax burden on prices. This suggests that pre-enforcement evasion rents were broadly shared with consumers...

What are the effects of austerity on distributional policy? We exploit the autonomy of Italian municipalities in setting non-linear income taxes and the exogenous introduction of a fiscal rule to show that austerity increases income tax progressivity. Consistent with this evidence, we find that...

Using a comprehensive dataset from German banks, we document the usage of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008-2013. Banks used the sovereign CDS market to extend, rather than hedge, their long exposures to sovereign risk during this period....

We study the political economy of allocation decisions within a major state investment bank. Our focus is the European Investment Bank (EIB) - "The Bank of the EU" - which is the largest multilateral lending (and borrowing) institution in the world. We collect (and make available) information on...

The objective of this paper is to quantify the economic effects of the introduction of a system of tradable permits in the European Union (EU). For this purpose we use linked applied general equilibrium models (AGE) for eleven EU member countries. This method enables us to measure the change in...

By international comparison as well as compared to other EU policies, the EU‘s Cohesion Policy (CP) evaluation system is far developed and institutionalized. This paper analyses the remaining gaps and shortcomings in the CP evaluation system against principles established by the OECD and...

Independent and high-quality evaluations of government policies are an important input for designing evidence-based policy. Lack of incentives and institutions to write such evaluations, on the other hand, carry the risk of turning the system into a costly beauty contest. We study one of the...

The specification of the world closure, i.e. the way of closing the domestic economy model by incorporating the external sector, is a crucial component for those models in which production and consumption is not specified endogenously for all countries. This paper looks explicitly at the...