The WTO and economic development

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established partly to support economic development in developing countries through international trade. This goal has been elusive, with some questioning the WTO's ability to achieve such a goal. In this volume, leading scholars in the economics of international ...

Disrupted economic relationships

disasters, sanctions, dissolutions

Empirical studies and theoretical analyses examine the causes and consequences of disruptions in cross-border economic relationships, including political conflict, economic sanctions, and institutional collapse. Cross-border economic relationships gradually strengthened in the decades after World War II; for most of the postwar period, international trade and ...

Energy tax and regulatory policy in Europe

reform priorities

The European Union (EU) faces critical challenges in energy policy making, the most pressing of which are how to achieve the deep greenhouse gas reductions promised at the December 2015 UN Conference of the Parties in Paris, and how this effort can be coordinated with ...

International currency exposure

The foreign currency denomination of contracts in international transactions can lead to international currency exposure at the country level with important economic and policy implications. When debts are denominated in foreign currency and revenues in domestic currency, exchange rate fluctuations can result in balance sheet ...

Illicit trade and the global economy

As international trade has expanded dramatically in the postwar period--an expansion accelerated by the opening of China, Russia, India, and Eastern Europe--illicit international trade has grown in tandem with it. This volume uses the economist's toolkit to examine the economic, political, and social problems ...

Economics and psychology

a promising new cross-disciplinary field

Eds. Bruno S. Frey, Alois Stutzer. The integration of economics and psychology has created a vibrant and fruitful emerging field of study. The essays in Economics and Psychology take a broad view of the interface between these two disciplines, going beyond the usual focus on ...

Dimensions of competitiveness

Ed. Paul De Grauwe. Competitiveness among nations is often approached as if it were a sports competition: some countries win medals, others lose out. This view of countries fighting it out in the economic arena is especially popular in business circles and among politicians. Economists ...

Institutions, development, and economic growth

Leading international economists discuss how and why institutions influence growth. This work talks about the empirical and theoretical studies that provide an overview and contribute to the current research. The determinants of economic growth and development are hotly debated among economists. Financial crises and failed ...

Japan's great stagnation

financial and monetary policy lessons for advanced economies

Experts on the Japanese economy examine Japan's prolonged period of economic underperformance, analyzing the ways in which the financial system, monetary policy, and international financial factors contributed to its onset and duration. After experiencing spectacular economic growth and industrial development for much of the ...

Competitive failures in insurance markets

theory and policy implications

Leading international economists offer new insights on recent developments in the economic analysis of the limits of insurability, with particular attention of adverse selection and moral hazard. Risk sharing is a cornerstone of modern economies. It is valuable to risk-averse consumers and essential for investment ...

Tax policy and labor market performance

This work talks about the effect of tax policies and welfare state incentives on the performance of the labor market: theoretical and empirical analyses by leading European and American economists. High unemployment in many European OECD countries has been attributed to factors ranging from rigid ...

Venture capital, entrepreneurship, and public policy

The existing literature in both public economics and financial economics often fails to consider how appropriate and effective public policy may be in promoting the venture capital industry. Public economics has dealt extensively with the effect of taxes and subsidies but has neglected the unique ...

Managing European Union enlargement

In May 2004 the European Union will undergo the largest expansion in its history when ten countries--Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia--become members. The number of new members and their diversity make this "big bang" enlargement particularly challenging ...

Mesuring the tax burden on capital and labor

Today's highly complicated tax codes have led economists and policy makers depend on simplified summary measures in order to understand how taxes affect the economy. Studies of the effective tax rate--that is, a measurement of the net amount of tax levied on certain economic ...

A Constitution for the European Union

The leaders of European Union member states have declared that a European constitution should take "a clear, open, effective, democratically controlled Community approach." Their goal -- that within the Union, "European institutions should be brought closer to its citizens" -- raises many questions about implementation. What is ...

Labor market institutions and public regulation

The six studies collected in this CESifo volume analyze the sometimes unpredictable effects of public regulation on the labor market. Examining a wide range of policy interventions -- from subsidized employment to an increased tax on capital -- and using a variety of methodologies to analyze them ...