Variations of bilateral aid flows are difficult to explain on the basis of official development objectives or recipient need. At the example of US aid to Pakistan, this paper suggests alternative political economic explanations, notably the relevance of ethnic lobbying and the relevance of US...

This paper analyzes the determinants of international financial institutions (IFIs)'s lending decisions to Pakistan. At the example of three major IFIs, the World Bank, IMF and ADB, this paper suggests that political economic factors, notably bureaucratic interest of international civil servants...

This paper takes a welfare-view on eastern enlargement of the EU, focusing on incumbent countries. Enlargement is decomposed into three elements: Single-market integration on commodity markets, budgetary costs from EU-expenditure policies, and singlemarket- induced migration from new to present...

The paper explores the interaction between debt crises and devaluation. Since the optimal level of devaluation in a crisis depends on the level of debt that has to be serviced, a default makes a devaluation less likely. Expected devaluation depends thus on expectations about default which is...

It is widely recognised that public-sector purchasers tend to discriminate in favour of domestic suppliers. We study the consequences of home-biased public procurement on international specialisation. In the theoretical analysis we find two effects. First, a country will specialise in the sector...

This paper evaluates complementarities of labor market institutions and the business cycle in the context of a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model economy. Matching between workers and vacancies with endogenous time spent in search, Nash-bargained wages, payroll taxation, and...