In this paper, we examine the role of the business cycle in divorce. To do so, we use a panel of 30 European countries covering the period from 1991 to 2010. We find a negative effect of the unemployment rate on the divorce rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of the divorce rate, even...

Chile provides an interesting setting to analyze vulnerability to poverty, especially today, after the last poverty count presented in 2013 by the Ministry of Planning. After twenty years of declining poverty, national indicators showed an increase in poverty from 13% in 2006 to 14% in 2011....

Economic growth and unemployment exhibit an ambiguous relationship – according to empirical studies. This ambiguity can be investigated by observing the role of the underground economy in shaping the productivity of firms. Indeed, unemployment may be absorbed by underground firms, which adopt...

The findings of the existing literature on the relationship between employment protection legislation and the unemployment rate are mixed. This study analyzes the relationship between employment protection legislation measured by the OECD Employment Protection Index and the unemployment rate...

Generally, Shariah (Islamic) indices are considered to have lower portfolio betas relative to conventional ones. The lower portfolio beta of Islamic indexes is a logical result of Shariah screening. As Shariah screening eliminates stocks with high financial leverage, the resulting portfolio beta...

The relation of the Greek employment policy to the European one, as it was formulated within EES and the Lisbon strategy, was a particular one. The Greek employment policy fully adopted the form, the structure and the discourse of the EES but it was only marginally influenced by the “way of...

Microcredit, being the most unique form of antipoverty intervention in terms of its methodology and outreach, has generated considerable amount of disagreements in recent times. While there may be more serious disagreements surrounding microcredit, this article addresses whether or not...

This chapter was written in 2007 in order to inform the diagnostic of Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Little has been written on the education system in Liberia since the start of the conflict in large part because of lack of good data. The chapter provides a diagnostic of Liberia’s...

Citizens of Southern Europe have been presented by the German media and politicians as lazy and work aversive. First, it is checked whether and to what extent those characterizations do reflect reality, and then, in view of the Greek economic crisis, it is shown that crises and not laziness...

In the literature, there has been an acquiescence that the greater the dependence on oil and mineral resources, the worse the growth performance of an economy. With time series data of Oil Revenue (proxy for petroleum industry), Non-oil Revenue, Investment and GDP per capital from 1970-2012, the...