The Central and Eastern European countries significantly reduced their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions between 1995 and 2003. Was this emission reduction just the fortuitous result of the major economic transformation undergone by countries in the transition? Or is it rather a result of more...

The high outward mobility that has characterised the countries in the Western Balkan (WB) region over the past three decades is often seen as tightly linked to severe labour market imbalances and persistently low utilisation of human capital over time. To shed light on these issues, we estimate...

We investigate the impact of differences in privatisation method on national economic performance in transition economies. Our approach is to estimate, using dynamic panel data methods, a growth equation over 23 countries for the period 1990-2001. Among our results, we find that mass...

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, after the US decision not to comply with the treaty, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, the Russian government decided to...

This paper presents and describes a new dataset of capital control restrictions on both inflows and outflows of 10 categories of assets for 100 countries over the period 1995 to 2013. Building on the data first presented in Schindler (2009) and other datasets based on the analysis of the IMF's...

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...

In this paper we present and describe a large quarterly frequency, macroeconomic database. The data provided are closely modeled to that used in Stock and Watson (2012a). As in our previous work on FRED-MD, our goal is simply to provide a publicly available source of macroeconomic “big data”...

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...

Structural reforms modify the institutional and regulatory framework to foster economic growth and improve welfare. While initially linked to economic liberalization, the concept has expanded to encompass a more comprehensive array of sector-specific interventions. However, the increased level...

India is at the cusp of a major urban transition. In less than twenty years, India's urban population is expected to nearly double from 377 million today to over 600 million. Indian cities already contribute an estimated two-thirds of India's GDP, and this number is expected to rise to 75% by...