The failure of the Maastricht criteria delayed Estonia’s accession to the European Monetary Union (EMU) until January 2011. During this time, trading shares with Eurozone countries declined, raising questions about the optimal accession time. In this study, the macroeconomic effects of...

Member countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) initiated wideranging labor market reforms in the last decade. This process is ongoing as countries that are faced with serious labor market imbalances perceive reforms as the fastest way to restore competitiveness within a currency union....

For more than two decades now, current-account imbalances are a crucial issue in the international policy debate as they threaten the stability of the world economy. More recently, the government debt crisis of the European Union shows that internal current account imbalances inside a currency...

Remittances from Germany are substantial. Cross-border transfers to family and friendship networks outside Germany are not only made by foreigners. Many naturalized migrants send money home as well. Here, we focus on transnational networks and gender-specific determinants of remittances from the...

In this paper, we focus on network- and gender-specific determinants of remittances, which are often explained theoretically by way of intra-family contracts. We develop a basic formal concept that includes aspects of the transnational network and derive hypotheses from it. For our empirical...

The determinants of migrants' remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In contrast to previous studies we analyze the motives for remittances not only for foreigners but also for the broader group of individuals with a personal migration background. Major...

Gender-specific determinants of remittances are the subject of this study based on German SOEP data (2001-2006). In 2007, about 7.3 million foreigners were living in Germany. While the total number of foreigners has decreased over the last decade, female migration to Germany has increased. A...

Yearly revenues from transnational criminal activity account for USD 1 to 1.6 trillion, and a wide variety of methods is employed to transfer those revenues across borders and launder it. The specific type of crime largely determines the choice of methods. Terrorists, for example, use both...

The terrorist threat has increased in importance over the last decade and Western governments have implemented a multitude of measures to address it. Their numbers and the significant financial cost they involve have, however, not been matched with an adequate evaluation of effectiveness. We can...

In this Policy Briefing, we review the available terrorism databases by focusing on their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. This serves as a guide for policymakers and academic researchers alike. The rapid and accelerating development of security economics has generated great demand...