Nationalstaaten verändern ihre Größe - dies lehrt die Geschichte. Gleichwohl wird die Größe eines Landes in der Ökonomik meist als exogen angenommen und nicht erklärt. Dies überrascht, weil die Staatsgröße in gewissem Umfang als Ergebnis rationaler Entscheidungen und als genuin...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

This paper investigates whether preferential trade agreements (PTA) promote exports to third nations through the expansion of the extensive margin (i.e. larger number of export goods). The analysis covers 11 South-South and South-North PTAs involving 36 countries that exported to 118 different...

This paper empirically analyzes both economic and non-economic determinants of attitudes toward immigrants, within and across countries. The two individual-level survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects...

There is now a long history of countries improving sustainability standards in most parts of the economy while at the same time pursuing the ambitions of rules-based international trade and economic integration with other countries. It is not surprising that countries at the vanguard of...

This study brings together two major sources of growth in the modern economy: trade and new ideas. Trade is a crucial process to improve economic specialisation and raise the productivity of economies. It is also a channel to diffuse technology and knowledge across countries. International...