The essays of this book are contributions to the empirical Literature in International Trade and Public Economics. They deal with the relationship between the structure and quality of the public sector and the process of economic integration. Two of the essays add to the empirical determinants...

We study the explanatory role of fundamentals versus the effects of nation brands for the size of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Using the EUROSTAT data on FDI flows we find that the Anholt Nation Brands Index has a significant and strong impact on FDI flows in a multi-variate analysis...

This study investigates the role of countries’ skills endowment for comparative advantage. It tests the theoretical model of Ohnsorge and Trefler (2007) who argue that it is the bundling of various skills at the worker level and their joint distribution that matter for trade specialisation....

This paper investigates whether the real oil price has an impact on the real exchange rates of three main oil-exporting countries: Norway, Russia and Saudi Arabia. We create our measure of the real effective exchange rates for Norway and Saudi Arabia (1980-2006) and for Russia (1995-2006),...

This paper examines empirically whether countries with relatively more lax environmental regimes have a comparative advantage in their competition for foreign direct investment. It seeks to contribute to the literature in several important ways. First, we use a measure of environmental...