The Stern/Nordhaus controversy has polarized the widely disparate beliefs about what to do in order to tackle the climate challenge. Between Nordhaus' ``policy ramp'' which recommends gradual action to avoid costly premature low-carbon investments and Stern's ``early strong emissions cut'', the...

assessing the decreasing role of geographical distance (as a result of globalisation) in the world economy spatial econometric techniquesDecreasing role of distance increasing importance of financial openness as channel of spillovers aross countries

Ageing societies influence the development of industrialised countries. A changing age composition of the population not only affects pension and social security systems but also infrastructure, housing market, available workforce and consumption pattern. Though the process proceeds only slowly,...

This paper explores the capacity of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models to track down policy induced economic changes and their ability to generate contrastable data for an economy. Starting from an empirically built regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM), a first stage CGE calibrated...

Compared to oil and gas, metals have been rather a side issue in the economic analysis of natural resources in the last decades. However, in the recent past we saw an increase of interest in the topic, mainly driven by the heated discussion about critical metals. Rare Earth Elements (REE) are...

The objective of this paper is to build and use FAVAR model to evaluate the responses of a wide range of macroeconomic variables to monetary policy shocks. FAVAR is superior to standard VAR for many reasons. One, with Factor VAR model, it is possible to combine the standard VAR approach with...

For a long time European gas markets used to be dominated by `national champions', vertically integrated firms, controlling imports, transit lines and distribution networks. In its drive to create a common market, the EU commission is trying to overcome this fragmentation by liberalizing...

Using a unique dataset comprising information for over 900 firms in the machine building sector in Belarus, we investigate the determinants of firm growth for an economy where state ownership of enterprises is widespread. We use panel data models based on generalizations of Gibrat's law, total...

Labour income taxes have decreased considerably in Finland in the period 1996-2008. At the same time the Finnish economy has grown rapidly. Nevertheless, there has been another coincident trend in this period: A rapid rise in inequality. This study aims to answer to what extent labour income tax...

Determine the optimal response of a small open economy's central bank to financial shocks that lead to increases in credit spreads. Increasing credit spreads reduce the efficacy of monetary policy when the central bank is reducing the policy rate to accommodate a lowering in economic...