Aid for Trade is a new international program to help developing countries meet the challenges of the multilateral trading system and benefit from the liberalization process. The European Union as the largest aid provider in the world is among the donors which has accepted this program and...

The media narratives with respect to EU external policies and their effects on developing countries generally paint a picture of unequal power dynamics and negative externalities, particularly with respect to international trade and land grabbing. In this paper, I use trade data to argue that...

Although it is not possible to identify a specific, theoretical optimum level of aid coordination for the European Union, there is a broad consensus on the need for reduced transaction costs and greater impact through a stronger adherence to coordination standards. However, neither member states...

Migration has become a major concern of European development policies. By improving socio-economic and political conditions through development cooperation, a reduction of South-North migration flows is envisaged. This new approach is examined by analyzing the causes of asylum migration from...

The war in Ukraine threatens global food security. At the same time, the European Union (EU) plans to advance the green transformation of its agro-food sector, which implies lower agricultural output. Relying on the political economy literature, this study examines if the war can thwart the...

This paper empirically explores the connection between two recent phenomena in the European scenario: the dramatic upsurge of non-tariff trade measures and the remarkable rise in the role of European business lobbies. While these two facts have been widely recognized by the international trade...

This paper investigates the behavior of rent-seeking politicians in an environment of increasing economic integration. The focus of the paper is on the implications of globalization-induced political yardstick competition for constitutional design with a view to the current discussion in the...

Did austerity cause Brexit? This paper shows that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction, are...

Lobbying can provide policy makers with important sector-specific information and thereby facilitating informed decisions. If going far beyond this, in particular if successfully influencing policy makers to unnecessarily tighten regulation or not opening already excessively regulated markets,...

The authors set up a political economy equilibrium framework for personal income distribution. Located in status theory, their concept is able to explain what justifies a certain or optimal degree of inequality in the society. The authors present an empirical analysis of personal income...