Suchergebnisse

A demographic transition resulting from an increase in the size of the young working age population can be a blessing or a curse for economic performance. We focus on the political stability effects of a larger youth population and hypothesize that corruption matters in this nexus. Using panel data covering the period of 2002-2012 for more than 150 countries, we find a negative interaction effect between the relative size of the youth population (17-25 years old) within the total working age population (15-64 years old) and corruption on political stability. This finding is robust, controlling for country and time fixed effects and a set of control variables that may affect stability. The negative interaction term between corruption and the youth population remains robust when we control for the persistency of political stability and the possible endogeneity of the main variables of interest through dynamic panel data estimations. Our findings shed more light on the political turmoil in the Arab world, with the so-called Arab Spring.

We estimate the impact of fiscal decentralization on different indicators of pollution for more than 80 countries from 1970 to 2000. Our cross country estimates show that fiscal decentralization increases pollution. However, higher quality of institutions can limit the destructive environmental effects of decentralization. The empirical results confirm a strand of the literature on decentralization that predicts a race to the bottom under federalism. The mitigating effect of good governance can be explained by relative preferences of local and central governments for environmental quality.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are among the world's top emitters of CO2 and SO2 in per capita terms. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether investing in the democratic development of these countries is an effective tool to make the economic growth in this region more environmentally compatible. Arguing on the basis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and using panel data on the income-emission-democracy nexus, we find evidence that improvements in the democratic development of the MENA countries help to mitigate environmental problems. Our results clearly show, that the quality of democratic institutions has a greater in uence on local environmental problems than on global environmental issues in the MENA region.

Environmental quality and climate change have long attracted attention in policy debates. Recently, air quality has emerged on the policy agenda. We calculate a new index of air quality using CO2 and SO2 emissions per capita as indicators and provide a ranking for 122 countries from 1985 to 2005. The empirical analysis supports the EKC hypothesis and shows a significant influence of determinants such as energy efficiency, industrial production, electricity produced from coal sources, and urbanization on air quality. According to our index, Luxemburg, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Japan are among the top 5 countries in terms of air quality performance. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Togo, and Nepal performed worst in 2005.

The Iranian economy is highly vulnerable to oil price fluctuations. This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and major macroeconomic variables in Iran by applying a VAR approach. The study points out the asymmetric effects of oil price shocks; for instance, positive as well as negative oil price shocks significantly increase inflation. We find a strong positive relationship between positive oil price changes and industrial output growth. Unexpectedly, we can only identify a marginal impact of oil price fluctuations on real government expenditures. Furthermore, we observe the Dutch Disease syndrome through significant real effective exchange rate appreciation.

Why did some countries decline to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly's first emergency session since 1997? Our research investigates the various economic, military, political, geographic, and historical factors that may have influenced the voting behavior of these countries in favor of Russia. Our Probit regressions reveal that the probability of voting in favor of Russia is significantly and robustly higher in countries that have defense cooperation agreements with Russia, have a longer history of leftist governments, are major recipients of Russian aid, have political similarities with Russia, and have no history of war with the Soviet Union.

AbstractIn this study, we look at how oil price shocks affect the incidence of protests in a country and how the size of a country's shadow economy influences this relationship. Using panel data from 144 countries, from the period of 1991–2015, we find evidence that negative oil price shocks significantly increase protests in countries with small shadow economies. The effect dissipates as the size of the shadow economy increases and eventually vanishes in countries with a shadow economy representing more than 35% of gross domestic product. Our analysis departs from existing literature by emphasizing the moderating role of a shadow economy on the effects of negative oil shocks on the incidence of protests in oil‐dependent economies. The results are robust to various specifications and their broader implications are discussed.