This paper examines product market policies in Croatia by benchmarking them to OECD countries and highlighting how policies that are more conducive to competition would stimulate a more efficient allocation of resources and, in consequence, facilitate convergence to higher income levels. OECD...

Less restrictive product market policies are crucial in promoting convergence to higher levels of GDP per capita. This paper benchmarks product market policies in Bulgaria to those of OECD countries by estimating OECD indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR). The PMR indicators allow a...

Less restrictive product market policies are crucial in promoting convergence to higher levels of GDP per capita. This paper benchmarks product market policies in Romania to those of OECD countries by estimating OECD indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR). The PMR indicators allow a...

This paper reviews the published work on the governance of regulatory authorities in order to identify the basic governance standards that apply and some of the factors that affect the implementation of good governance. There are four pillars of good regulatory governance: independence,...

Many production firms use intermediary trading firms to export indirectly. This paper uses Chinese export data at the transaction level to investigate the tax evasion motive through indirect trade. The paper provides strong evidence that, under China's partial export value-added tax rebate...

Power market integration is analyzed in a two-country model with nationally regulated firms and costly public funds. If the generation costs between the two countries are too similar, negative business stealing outweighs efficiency gains so that the subsequent integration welfare decreases in...

This paper estimates the effects of peer benchmarking by institutional investors on asset prices. To identify trades purely due to peer benchmarking as separate from those based on fundamentals or private information, the paper exploits a natural experiment involving a change in a government...

Instead of just focusing on the effect of exchange rate levels (undervalued or overvalued exchange rates) on trade, this paper provides an analysis of the effects of exchange rate volatility levels on international trade. Intuitively, an increase in exchange rate volatility leads to uncertainty...

This paper examines the current stage of development of government securities markets in the non-GCC MENA region focusing in five countries that have government bond markets with a minimum size and greater potential for market development: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. The...

Why are emerging economies excessively vulnerable to shocks to external funding? What was the role of financial flows from emerging to developed economies in setting the stage for the subprime crisis? This paper addresses these questions in a simple general equilibrium framework that emphasizes...