Legally binding treaties or memorandums have been used over time to regulate the issue of national borders of many European countries. As a result, relatively large groups of people have become ethnic minorities in other countries. They may conserve their ethnic identities, and therefore their...

With the help of the concept of linkage and leverage, this paper aims at exploring how the relative influence of international actors (namely the European Union (EU) and Russia) can explain the persistence of the authoritarian regime in Belarus. The findings suggest that in the background of the...

It has been shown, for non-Communist developed and developing countries, that earlier development of agriculture, a dense population, and a state-level polity is associated with a higher income and more rapid economic growth in the late 20th Century. We investigate whether this was also the case...

There is widespread discussion both within and outside Cuba concerning what direction the Cuban economy will go under its new interim president Raúl Castro. This short paper is intended to contribute two pieces of information that are needed to intelligently discuss that issue- where Cuba's...

The long history of sovereign debt and the associated enforcement problem have attracted researchers in many fields. In this paper, we survey empirical work by economists, historians, and political scientists. As we review the empirical literature, we emphasize parallel developments in the...

This paper takes a critical look at available proxies of uncertainty. Two questions are adressed: (i) How do we evaluate proxies given that subjective uncertainty is inherently unobservable? (ii) Is there such a thing as a general macroeconomic uncertainty? Using correlations, some narrative...

Dieser Beitrag hat zwei Ziele: Erstens werden die empirischen Ergebnisse über die Erlöse (Geldwäsche-Ströme) der transnationalen organisierten Kriminalität (TOK) weltweit sowie für einige OECD-Länder dargestellt sowie deren Größenordnung nach verschiedenen Verbrechensarten. Weiters...

Composite indicators are increasingly important in country comparisons and in policy making. At the same time, the robustness of the results obtained and in particular of the rankings and the conclusions obtained from the analysis it is usually accepted with doubts. In this sense our proposal is...

This paper is a first attempt to estimate the size and development of the shadow economy of 158 countries over the period 1991 up to 2015. Using the Multiple Indicators, Multiple Causes (MIMIC) method we apply for the first time (i) the light intensity approach instead of GDP avoiding the...

Recent events, particularly Brexit, have propelled India to diversify its trade and investment markets in the European Union (EU). Within the EU, India has trade and investment synergy with Ireland. The paper explores business opportunities between India and Ireland, by analysing their bilateral...