We provide empirical estimates of the risksharing and redistributive properties of fiscal equalization among the states of the German federation. Fiscal equalization serves as a mechanism to insure state budgets against asymmetric revenue shocks, but provides almost no insurance against regional...

The past literature presents ambiguous evidence about the bidirectional and causal influences between countries ́institutional framework and their trading activity. In our analysis, we investigate the relationship between institutions and trade constructing a measure of institutions from the...

Bilateral and regional cooperation initiatives in Asia have been growing in importance over the last five years.These accords span the real and financial sectors; rather than following the more typical pattern of "trade first,money later", recent policy initiatives involve the simultaneous...