African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of special economic zones fall well below...

The reaction of exports to real exchange rate movements can differ according to the nature of the destination country. We derive and estimate a gravity equation for 20 OECD exporting countries and 52 developed and developing importing countries. We test how trade costs dampen the effect of real...

The sharp decline in trade volume and value during the current economic crisis has contributed to lower transportation costs and reduced waiting times at border crossings, reducing the urgency of progress on trade facilitation. Meanwhile, greater trade is expected to play a key role in recovery,...

There are many stories of democracy but little consensus over which variables robustly determine its emergence and survival. We apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of 59 factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over 3 million regressions. The most robust determinants of...

This paper examines the extent to which economic crises facilitate the development of more effective regional institutions and whether such institutions can shield regions from crises. It compares six regional economic crises over the last four decades and the institution building - or decay -...

The whole complex of pandemic, economic, and social crises has become a kind of a stress test for the system of multilateral cooperation as it is weakened by geopolitical conflicts, contradictions between the key members and growing mistrust due to stalled reforms of international organizations...

Tensions between national democratic accountability and transnational challenges undermine trust and collective action. Asymmetry between an integrated global economy, fragmented global community, and defective global polity, causes social turbulence. Facing technological disruption, we need a...

Tensions between national democratic accountability and transnational challenges undermine trust and collective action. Asymmetry between an integrated global economy, fragmented global community, and defective global polity, causes social turbulence. Facing technological disruption, we need a...

This paper empirically analyzes the role of institutional factors in shaping the dynamics of gross capital flows. We build an institutional quality index and test its relevance for both gross capital inflows and outflows using a panel of 56 countries, differentiating between high-income and...