The paper investigates the link between corruption and efficiency by using a rich micro-level dataset concerning solid waste collection activities in 529 Italian municipalities observed over the years 2004-2006. In order to test the impact of corruption on cost efficiency we estimate a...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of trade cost reduction on the Asian economy by employing a sub-national level model based on New Economic Geography. Our model comprises seven sectors, including manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors, and 1,715 regions in 18...

Today, China is the world’s leading gold producer and its second largest consumer. Traditionally imposing strict regulations on its gold market, China has ushered in a process of liberalisation a decade ago, encouraging individual gold trading, gold import and export. A boom in domestic demand...

Over the past century, most industrialized countries have adopted public pension systems based pay-as-you-go system, according to which the actual contributors pay the pensions of the actual pensioners, with the expectation that future taxpayers pay their pensions when they retire. The evolution...

This paper uses the IMF’s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model (GIMF) to assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on the Czech economy. Its contribution is threefold. First, it provides estimates of dynamic fiscal multipliers for a variety of fiscal instruments (tax and expenditure),...

The country farm structure is based on different specializations and distribution of farms in different size groups; and the productivity growth in each particular group can be different from that reflecting a mean performance of entire sector. In order to improve targeting of policy measures...

The ever-growing livestock industry in the Texas High Plains has a significant impact on water usage and groundwater resources throughout the region.  The groundwater sources are depleting at an excessive rate and have low-recharge while precipitation is scarce in this region.  The regional...

For many years, empirical research in economics concentrated predominantly on the effectiveness of monetary policy and less on fiscal policy. But developments like the Balance Budget Amendment in the USA, the single currency union in Europe or the world economic crisis in 2009 has raised the...

Top-down computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are used extensively for analysis of energy and climate policies. Energy-intensive industries are usually represented in top-down economic models as abstract economic production functions, of the constant-elasticity-ofsubstitution (CES)...

Uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently. Price controls - in the form of taxes - fix the marginal cost of compliance and lead to uncertain levels of compliance. Meanwhile quantity controls - in the form of tradable permits...