Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) show structural shortcomings with regard to the development of international markets. Thus, it is the explicit goal of foreign trade promotion to foster the degree of internationalisation of SMEs. Yet, empirical research whether foreign trade promotion...

In the last 60 years, the results of development aid have been mixed. Thus far, it has been mostly the aid recipient countries, which have been held responsible for aid’s shortcomings. That focus is misplaced, however, since the donor countries, through development aid, also export some of...

Regulation is one of the key tools governments can use to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and move towards recovery. While the pandemic underscores the need for well-designed, evidence-based regulatory policies, the extraordinary pressures it imposed often forced governments to shorten...

In this paper, a new approach to disclose the impact of politics on economic growth is presented: we use data derived from content analysis of party manifestos as measures of party preferences. In a panel of 23 OECD countries, we detect a positive impact of party support for various...

Direct public support for business R&D is a well-established remedy to market failures, yet empirical evidence on its effectiveness yields conflicting results. The paper investigates the impact of the first European public R&D grant program targeting small and medium enterprises (i.e. the SME...

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the...

One of the EU's main priorities is to boost the competitiveness of its member states through subsidies from the European Structural Funds. As SMEs are key elements of competitiveness, their support through various subsidy programmes is important. However, as our research shows, the distribution...

Lockdowns imposed by the European Union (EU) Member States produced significant consequences in the form of losses to companies, which is why the Member States decided to assist businesses from public funds. This paper aims to identify and initially assess the implementation of schemes under...

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on SMEs and entrepreneurs, and the SME and entrepreneurship policy measures implemented during the course of a year since the start of the pandemic. The paper formulates 15 lessons learned for policy going forward, to assist...

Elections may take place in precarious environments that even pose health risks. I consider the case of Bavaria, where close to ten million people were asked to vote in the municipal elections on March 15 of 2020, to quantify the toll of elections in a pandemic. Despite declaring a state of...