This note reconsiders the results obtained by Matsen and Røisland [Eur. J. Political Economy 21 (2005) 365-384] by dropping the simplifying assumption that the median of country-specific shocks is equal to their mean. Majority voting then increases the volatility of the chosen interest rate...

This paper investigates whether financial intermediary development influences macroeconomic technical efficiency on a sample of 47 countries, both developed and developing, over 1980-1995. We do so by applying Battese and Coelli (1995)’s method at the aggregate level. It is found that...

The present paper applies a gravity model with fixed country effects to M&A flows on a sample of 1215 pairs of countries over the 1998-2001 period, to test the impact of European integration. That model, which had to our knowledge not been applied to M&A flows so far, allows us to observe that...

This paper analyses the voting and abstention patterns in French departments in the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty, in light of the potential impact of monetary union. We observe that departmental characteristics implying either greater benefits or lower costs from monetary union are...

Using a sample of 96 countries over the nineties, this paper examines the extent to which different dimensions of governance affect FDI inflows. It considers six aspects of governance. The results of a least-squares estimation suggest a positive relationship between institutional quality and...

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative...

We analyze how adding the shadow economy to official output figures affects estimated technical efficiency at the country level. We find that this only slightly affects the ranking of efficiency scores, but increases average efficiency in a sample of 87 to 97 countries, both developed and...

This note studies the volatility of the policy chosen by a committee whose members’ preferences are volatile, due to common and individual preferences shocks. It is shown that majority voting mitigates the latter but not the former. The volatility of the policy is smaller the smaller the...

This paper tests whether corruption may act as an efficient grease for the wheels of an oth-erwise deficient institutional framework. We analyze the interaction between aggregate efficiency, corruption, and other dimensions of governance for a panel of 54 developed and developing countries....

Using a sample of 96 countries over the nineties, this paper examines the extent to which different dimensions of governance affect FDI inflows. It considers six aspects of governance. The results of a least-squares estimation suggest a positive relationship between institutional quality and...