Using a macro panel of 31 European countries, this paper shows that the application of a QR procedure to the estimation of poverty risk offers a picture of poverty determinants and cross country poverty differences more reliable than that emerging from conditional mean estimations. The extent...

In most countries, the regulation of gaming is based on whether the predominance for the outcome of the game lies in skill or chance. As poker has become extremely popular in recent years, a heated discussion has evolved about the amount of skill involved in poker. Recent contributions to this...

The relationship between corruption and the shadow economy is not clear. Theoretically, they either substitute or complement each other -exhibiting either a negative or positive relationship. This paper -using a structural equation model with two latent variables - extracts information on...

When enacting labor market regulation governments face courts that interpret and implement the legal code. We show that the incentives for governments for labor market reform increase with the uncertainty that is involved in the implementation of legal codes through courts. Given that judges...

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years – a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that...

Using the KOF Index of Globalization and two indices of economic freedom, we empirically analyze whether globalization and economic liberalization affect governments ́respect for human rights using a panel of 106 countries over the 1981-2004 period. According to our results, physical integrity...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 120 countries, including developing, Eastern Europe and Central Asian and high income OECD countries over 1999 to 2006 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2004/05 in 76 developing countries is 35.5%, in...

The paper confronts different aspects of decentralization: fiscal decentralization, postconstitutional regulatory decentralization, and constitutional decentralization – using a single dataset from Russian Federation of the Yeltsin period as a politically asymmetric country and a variety of...

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in European merger legislation in 2004. We first propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...

Auf der Basis der Deutschen Beschäftigtenhistorik untersuchen wir die Konjunkturabhängigkeit von Löhnen auf aggregierter und regionaler Ebene. Dabei unterscheiden wir zwischen Betriebswechslern und Beschäftigten, die im selben Betrieb bleiben. Wir finden, dass die Reaktion der Löhne auf...