Rose & Spiegel (2011) find that Olympic Games host countries experience significant positive and lasting effects on exports. They interpret their results as an indication that countries use the hosting of such an event as a signal of their (new) openness and competitiveness. We challenge these...

Informal housing arrangements, substandard structures, congestion, and land use conflicts characterize the urban housing problem in the Philippines. The record suggests that the response of the State, especially its reliance on below-market priced mortgage loans, has aggravated rather than...

The Philippine peso appreciation has been creating serious problems for the economy because of the high degree of unemployment and poverty incidence in the country. More specifically, it threatens contraction of the export sector through loss of competitiveness. The paper tracks the exchange...

This paper applies an intuitive approach based on stock market data to a unique dataset of large concentrations during the period 1990-2002 to assess the effectiveness of European merger control. The basic idea is to relate announcement and decision abnormal returns. Under a set of four...

Entrepreneurship education ranks highly on policy agendas in Europe and the US, but little research is available to assess its impacts. In this context it is of primary importance to understand whether entrepreneurship education raises intentions to be entrepreneurial generally or whether it...

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization in terms of tariff cuts within the Eastern European enlargement on German and Austrian firm productivity. Unique matching of data from 1994 to 2003 suggests that tariff reductions raise parent firm productivity significantly. A ten percentage...

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in European merger legislation in 2004. We ?rst propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...

Investment liberalizing countries are often concerned that cross-border mergers & acquisitions might have an adverse effect on domestic firms and benefit multinational enterprises (MNEs). However, given that domestic assets are sufficiently scarce, we identify a preemption effect and an asset...

This paper considers groups who are most likely to be vulnerable to new social risks and tests the effects of social policies on their poverty levels. Specifically, the paper conducts multi-level regression analyses across 18 OECD countries near the year 2004, analyzing the effects of social...

We use a range of data sources to assess if, and to what extent, government redistribution policies have slowed or accelerated the trend towards greater income disparities in the past 20-25 years. In most countries, inequality among 'non-elderly' households has widened during most phases of the...