The WTO TBT Agreement obliges governments to use international standards as a basis for regulation, yet leaves a degree of flexibility with respect to the choice of standard, and the manner of its use. This interplay between obligation and flexibility has given rise to tension in various fora of...

This paper fills a void in the issue of determinants of privatization prices by concentrating in one industry across many countries. This has not been done before, as the literature has only focused on (i) many industries in one country, (ii) a single industry in one country, and (iii) many...

This paper uses a difference-in-difference methodology similar to the one originally proposed by Rajan and Zingales (1998) to test whether defaulting hurts the more export-oriented industries. Strong support for this hypothesis was found, but contrary to the findings of previous studies, our...

Abundant empirical evidence links well-functioning institutions and good governance to better economic and social outcomes. It is thus an important challenge to determine which conjunction of factors produces better institutions. Along this line, the objective of this paper is twofold. First, it...

This paper studies the impact of regional integration agreements (RIAs) on the location of foreign direct investment (FDI), using data on bilateral outward FDI stocks from the OECD International Direct Investment Statistics. The dataset covers FDI from 20 source countries, all of them from the...

This paper examines the effect of employment protection regulation on gross job flows in a sample of developed and developing countries. By implementing a differences-in-differences test we lessen the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country...

We suggest that foreign banks may represent a trade-off for their developing country hosts. A portfolio model is developed to show that a more diversified international bank may be one of lower, overall risk and less susceptible to funding shocks but may react more to shocks that affect expected...