The estimation of the costs of conflict is currently receiving a lot of attention in the literature. This paper aims to give a thorough overview of the existing literature, first by addressing the history of case studies that address conflict costs and second by looking at the existing body of...

We investigate the persistence of levels of self-employment and new business formation in different time periods and under different framework conditions. The analysis shows that high levels of regional self-employment and new business formation tend to be persistent for periods as long as 80...

The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about...

In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of development aid in recipient countries. Specifically, we analyze the relationship between per-capita income and foreign aid for a maximum of 131 recipient countries over the 1960 to 2006 period. We employ annual data and 5-year averages and,...

This paper develops a model to assess the quantitative effect of entry cost and financial friction on cross-country income and total factor productivity (TFP) differences. The main focus is on the interaction between entry cost and financial friction. The model is calibrated to match...

There are large differences in income per capita across countries. Growth accounting finds that a large part of the differences comes from the differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper explores whether barrier to entry is an important factor for the cross-country differences in...

This study seeks to determine the extent to which the former communist states of Central and South-West Asia are infected by the Dutch Disease. We take a detailed look at the functioning of the transmission mechanism of the Dutch Disease, i.e. the chains that run from commodity prices to real...

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of life expectancy for optimal schooling and lifetime labor supply. The results of a simple prototype Ben-Porath model with age-specific survival rates show that an increase in lifetime labor supply is not a necessary, nor a...

This paper analyses macroeconomic aspects of exit from aid-dependence. By 'exit from aid', we mean substantial and enduring decline over time in Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The relevant macroeconomic variables are identified by systematically...

Optimum Currency Area (OCA) approaches turn to be inadequate in the analysis of the new regional monetary integration schemes that have sprung up among developing and emerging market economies. Instead, in accordance with the concept of 'original sin' (Eichengreen et al.) we argue that regional...