As a pragmatic definition applied throughout this paper, an import surge is considered a situation in which the quantity or value of imports suddenly exceeds a "normal" level. This somewhat loose concept leaves questions as to how "suddenly", "normal" and "excess" should be defined precisely,...

An interesting puzzle is that trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has been associated with a sharp increase in the skill premium in both developed and developing countries.This is in contrast with neoclassical theory, according to which trade should increase therelative return of the...

Vor dem Hintergrund des oft vernachlässigten industriellen Umweltschutzes in Entwicklungsländern entwickelt das Pilotvorhaben zur Unterstützung umweltorientierter Unternehmensführung in Entwicklungsländern (P3U) der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) das Instrument...

Malnutrition and food deprivation, which are concentrated in poor countries, have been along-term concern of economists, but as per capita income in developed countries has grown in the20th century, a new problem of over-nutrition leading to obesity has occurred. This paper developsmodels of...

The paper explores the determinants of up-front fees on sovereign bank loans.Remuneration of bank loans is typically channelled through the floating interestbenchmark, the interest spread, and a battery of fees. There is substantial evidence of thespread paying for long-run sovereign repayment...

Individuals and business owners engage in an increasingly complex array of financialdecisions that are critical for their success and well-being. Yet a growing literature documentsthat in both developed and developing countries, a large fraction of the population is unpreparedto make these...

Recent research has demonstrated that while government expenditures are countercyclical inmost industrialized countries, they tend to be procyclical in developing countries. We develop adynamic political economy model to explain this phenomenon. In the model, public expendituresprovide insurance...

Utilizing a new database of tax rates, tax revenues and tax income-elasticities we contribute to the debate on the effects of …fiscal policyon economic activity in a number of ways. First, using both panelGMM and panel VAR methods, we …find that the effects of tax cuts onGDP growth are...

A large empirical literature claims that …fiscal policy in developingcountries is procyclical, in contrast to high-income countries where it is countercyclical. Some authors, however, have questioned this …finding because theliterature has typically ignored endogeneity problems. To settle this...