This paper empirically analyzes the impact of aid on education for about 100 countries over the period 1970-2005. We estimate a system of equations to test whether and to what extent the impact of sector-specific aid on educational attainment depends on (i) the extent to which aid adds to...

Insufficiently flexible labour markets combined with high welfare costs are often thought to be the main cause of unsatisfactory growth in Europe. This paper uses the OECD data on regulation of the product and labour market to confirm the difference in the extent of regulation between US and...

The economic performance of European countries was in general disappointing in the nineties. However, country difference increased, as it was that in some European countries economic growth and productivity accelerated or could match US rates. This paper uses a broad set of performance...

Inflexible labour markets combined with high welfare costs are often thought to be the main cause of low growth in Europe. This paper uses OECD data to assess the relative impact of regulation on differences in economic performance across countries since 1990. The impact of regulation is...

The recent admission of Slovakia into the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) stands in sharp contrast with the considerable difficulties faced by Hungary with the fulfillment of the Maastricht criteria. This is a puzzling development for two reasons: first, during the early phase of the...

There is a consensus that within the European Union, Germany is presently the country lagging farthest behind in terms of economic dynamics. Most researchers blame rising wages, welfare costs, and overregulated labour markets for this poor position. Some add that as a result of membership in the...

A windfall of natural resource revenue (or foreign aid) faces government with choices of how to manage public debt, investment, and the distribution of funds for consumption, particularly if the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. We show that the permanent income hypothesis prescription...

A growing body of recent macroeconomic evidence suggests that volatility is detrimental to economic growth. The channels through which volatility affects growth, however, are less clear; substantive evidence based on disaggregate data is almost non-existent. This paper offers a framework in...

Der Beitrag analysiert die Argentinien-Krise, vergleicht die makroökonomische Entwicklung von Argentinien, Brasilien, Chile und Mexiko seit der Mexiko-Krise und entwickelt Indikatoren zur Beurteilung der Entwicklungschancen dieser Länder. Für Argentinien wie für Brasilien, Chile und Mexiko...

The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called ‘fragile states’, countries with critically...