In this paper we are interested in the relationship between globalization, political institutions (notably, democracy) and international environmental commitments. This relationship has been the subject of a particularly intensive debate and the existing literature offers a wide range of partly...

Did colonization a ect the patterns of development of the colonized territories. I draw attention to the importance of counterfactuals and claim that assessments of the colonial impact are contingent on the counterfactual employed. Paying attention to counterfactuals enables us to design an...

Given the secrecy that wraps the flows of the GCC countries petrodollar surpluses to the United States and the pressures on these countries to spend and recycle more, this study attempts to uncover the direct and reverse causal relationships between the GCC financial accounts and the US current...

Central bank governor changes in emerging markets may convey important signals about future monetary policy. Based on a new daily data set, this paper examines the reactions of foreign exchange markets, domestic stock market indices and sovereign bond spreads to central bank governor changes....

We investigate whether information sharing among banks has affected credit market performance in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, using a large sample of firm-level data. Our estimates show that information sharing is associatedwith improved availability...

This paper analyzes the link between inflation and democracy in developing countries. In order to address the endogeneity issue of democracy, I use the date of political independence as an instrument for democratic institutions. The application of the criterion of Stock and Yogo (2002, 2005) for...

The paper analyzes the relation between institutional quality, such as corruption, in a country and its monetary regime. It is shown that a credibly fixed exchange rate to a low inflation country, like a currency board, can reduce corruption and improve the fiscal system. A monetary union,...

The primary evidence about the factors determining successful self-governance of common-pool resources (CPR) has come from case studies. More recently, this observational evidence has been complemented by insights from economic experiments. Here we advance a third approach in which the role of...

In this study we use data on subjective well being and migration in Cuenca, one of the Ecuador's largest cities. We examine the impact of migration on the happiness of the family left behind. We use the propensity score matching estimator to take into account the endogeneity of migration. Our...

This paper analyzes the impact of trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) on drug prices in seven middle income countries. Applying both an econometric as well as an explorative analysis we find three key messages: First, the introduction of TRIPS in the selected countries tends to...