Globalization transforms not just the economics of production and exchange in the world, but also the political economy of public policies. We analyze how wine regulations, and more specifically planting rights restrictions, have been affected by globalization, in particular colonial expansions...

This article reviews beer production, consumption and the industrial organization of breweries throughout history. Monasteries were the centers of the beer economy in the early Middle Ages. Innovation and increased demand later induced the growth of commercial breweries. Globalization and...

This article reviews beer production, consumption and the industrial organization of breweries throughout history. Monasteries were the centers of the beer economy in the early Middle Ages. Innovation and increased demand later induced the growth of commercial breweries. Globalization and...

Recently, the European Commission has proposed to introduce a new mi- gration policy instrument - Blue Cards - to attract highly skilled workers from abroad by lifting labour market restrictions, offering financial and housing ben- efits. The excludability character of human capital suggests...

Does higher resource inequality between ethnic groups lead to ethnic conflict? In this paper, we empirically investigate this question by constructing a new measure of inequality using rainfall on ethnic homelands during the plant-growing season. Our dataset covers the period 1982-2001 and...

This study uses a new, innovative measure of trade protection and finds that less trade protection is associated with higher income per capita, using data from 131 developed and developing countries.

Economists most often analyse the effects of protectionist or antidumping policies in the context of tariffs or voluntary export restraints - the latter are very similar to quotas in fact. Antidumping policies in the European Union however make frequent use of price undertakings. Whereas the...

This paper investigates whether European electricity market refirms have induced any changes infirm efficiency either through productive, allocative or dynamic efficiency improve- ments. In particular, this ex-post analysis looks closely at productivity e ects of changing industry structure,...

This paper presents an ex-post empirical analysis of the impact of European electricity mar- ket refirms on markups ofirms. The working hypothesis is that further economic integration would bring competition into electricity markets re ected by lower markups of electricityfirms. The results show...

This paper investigates the relationship between the diffusion of EU standards and product quality upgrading using highly disaggregated import data to the EU in the food industry. Results show that, on average, the diffusion of EU voluntary standards boosts the rate of quality upgrading. However...