The choice of Microfinance (MF) by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as the primary means of poverty alleviation should have brought clarity to the role and functioning of MF, but instead it seems to have generated a fog. It is desirable to take a fresh look and start from first principles...

Since 2013, the European Union (EU) is negotiating with the United States of America (US) a Free Trade Agreement (FTA ), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTI P). A controversial topic in the negotiations are the different quality standards in the agri-food sectors of both...

In this paper we analyse the impact of foreign aid on gender outcomes and attitudes. We do this by matching geocoded household surveys with aid projects. This offers a middle way between project evaluations and aggregated cross-country comparisons, measuring an average community effect around...

In 2006 the Center for Global Development's report 'When Will We Ever Learn? Improving lives through impact evaluation' bemoaned the lack of rigorous impact evaluations. The authors of the present paper researched international organizations and countries including Mexico, Colombia, South...

This article evaluates the possible effects of the 11th package of sanctions against Russia in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war on Azerbaijan. This study is important because Russia is one of Azerbaijan's main trade partners and Azerbaijan's main export market in terms of non-oil sector...

Financial market crises with the threat of a subsequent debt-deflation depression have occurred with increasing regularity in the United States from 1980 through the present. Almost reflexively, when confronted with such circumstances, US institutions and the policymakers that run them have...

Financial market crises with the threat of a subsequent debt-deflation depression have occurred with increasing regularity in the United States from 1980 through the present. Almost reflexively, when confronted with such circumstances, US institutions and the policymakers that run them have...

In this paper we estimate the effects of an unconditional basic income on labor supply and income distribution with a special focus on the incentives to work in the family context. An unconditional basic income guarantees every citizen a minimum income without any means-testing. We simulate a...

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 ?rst propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...

With interest groups significantly affecting economic performance (according to Mancur Olson) and a vital interest of governments in economic growth and low unemployment in order to win elections, there should be a link between political business cycles and the evolution of lobbies over time...