The EU must embrace international cooperation and collaboration in technology-driven industries to ensure competitiveness and global relevance, while also considering the drawbacks of isolationist policies. The EU's commitment to open markets and global cooperation has historically been its...

The Belgian pharmaceutical sector has been accorded a leading role in the attainment of the R&D investment targets which the EU Member States set themselves as part of the Lisbon strategy. To gain a better insight into that sector’s research activities, the NBB conducted an ad hoc survey in...

This paper provides a framework to assess correlations between the change of institutional functions (political centralization, plurality, rule of law, security of property, economic liberty, measured by 12 indicators) and improvements in human development (income, education, health) and...

The Congo region is one of the best examples of the negative consequences of world market integration (and hence globalization) in the world. Today's Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is an almost perfectly failing state - although not necessarily with respect to a state's function as a...

We study from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective how a network of military alliances and enmities affects the intensity of a conflict. The model combines elements from network theory and from the politico-economic theory of conflict. We obtain a closed-form characterization of the...

This paper explores the connections between cross border trade, armed rebellion, and state making in the borderland of North Kivu province (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) and Kasese (Western Uganda) during the recent war to peace transition (1990's-2003). Rather than collapsed statehood...

A new DIIS study presents an overview of the role of transit taxes levied at checkpoints in financing ongoing conflicts around the world. Compiling evidence from six different contexts, this DIIS Working Paper finds that in each of the conflicts, checkpoints form a key source of revenue for...

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the poorest countries in the World. The construction sector will play an essential part to bring the country on the path of economic growth, and competition within the sector is crucial to achieve this goal. In this paper we analyze the effect of...