This paper rehabilitates the concept of effective rate of protection for use in political economy. The usual definition corresponds to no economically interesting magnitude in general equilibrium. The effective rate of protection for a sector is redefined here as the uniform tariff which is...

This chapter applies recent research on environmental enforcement to a potential U.S. program to control greenhouse gases, especially through emission trading. Climate policies present the novel problem of integrating emissions reductions that are relatively easy to monitor (such as carbon...

Most observers have concluded that while money markets and government bond markets are rapidly integrating following the introduction of the common currency in the euro area, there is little evidence that a similar integration process is taking place for retail banking. Data on cross-border...

This paper considers two central problems in our statistical frameworks which impair the ability to use wealth to assess economic sustainability or the impacts of economic downturns. Some increases in wealth may reflect increased economic rents--in particular, land and exploitation rents--and...

This paper analyzes the sovereign risk contagion using credit default swaps (CDS) and bond premiums for the major eurozone countries. By emphasizing several econometric approaches (nonlinear regression, quantile regression and Bayesian quantile regression with heteroskedasticity) we show that...

This paper offers a new approach to measuring the size of the informal economy based on VAT data for the European Union. Although data intensive, our EVADE measure is simpler and more transparent than existing measures. EVADE also shows more variation across countries of Europe than earlier...

This paper studies two episodes where an exporting industry saw its sales plummet after importing countries banned their products to protect their citizens' health. The first case is the poisoned grapes crisis involving Chile and the United States in 1989. The second is the mad cows dispute...

Prices of food vary greatly among the developed countries, and some countries' food prices have been consistently far above the OECD average. The main explanation for persistently high food price levels is the extent of protection of agricultural products at the farm level, partly explainable by...

The standard of living in the industrialized nations has been steadily increasing over the last few decades. Yet some observers wonder whether we are really getting any happier. This paper addresses that question by examining well-being data on 100,000 randomly sampled Americans and Britons from...