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This article presents a review of recent studies that estimate the trade effects of foreign aid. It also provides new results obtained using panel data techniques to estimate the direct effects of aid on international trade accounting for countries' participation in free trade agreements, and the indirect effects that aid exerts on income through trade. A structural gravity model of trade augmented with aid and free trade agreement variables is estimated for a cross-section of 33 donor countries and 125 recipient countries over the period 1995 to 2016. In a second step, the indirect effect of aid on income is estimated using a control function approach and instrumental variable techniques. The main results indicate that development aid has a robust direct effect on donor exports (the effect on recipient exports, however, is not robust). It also has an indirect positive effect on income levels in the recipient countries. The effects are heterogeneous and vary by region.

This paper empirically investigates the effects of governance quality on the num‑ ber of African asylum seekers in Europe over the period 1996–2018 and evaluates the extent to which official development aid acts as a catalyst. With this purpose in mind, different gravity model specifications and estimation approaches have been employed. The obtained results suggest that the asylum flows are strongly deter‑ mined by governance quality in the country of origin and that this effect does depend on the amount of foreign aid received from developed countries. Moreover, it is also found that development aid is only effective in reducing asylum applications com‑ ing from countries with good governance. Moreover, we find no differences in the estimated elasticity of foreign aid on asylum claims for the beneficiaries of the Euro‑ pean Union Emergency Trust Fund (EUTF) for Africa, the main aim of which has been to improve living conditions of potential migrants in their countries of origin.

This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of environmental standards by studying the role of income inequality and freedom of press. Given that evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve has only been found for some countries, it is thus crucial to investigate whether ot factors besides income per capita levels may be affecting countries' decisions to pass environmentally-friendly legislation. We investigate the effe that inequality and freedom of the press have on environmental stringency for a sample of OECD and BRIICS countries and a global sample of 82 countries using data over the period 1994-2015. We hypothesize that the more unequal a society is, and the greater the oppression of the press is, less stringent environmental policies are. The results partially confirm our hypothesis. In particular, lack of press freedom is negatively correlated environmental stringency, whereas inequality shows a non-linear effect only for non-high-income countries.

This paper focuses on twenty‐first‐century‐trade governance patterns within the Commonwealth (CW) countries. It uses an augmented gravity model to examine the role of governance in influencing trade and investment flows, and whether enhanced trade governance within the CW countries could potentially foster trade gains, on a both intra‐ and extra‐CW basis. Results show a 10% reduction in the costs incurred for a good to exit a country can increase intra‐CW exports by 5%. Second, contract enforcement is more efficient among CW members, and requires 20% less time compared to the world average. Third, every 1 percentage point improvement in government effectiveness triggers an increase in exports from CW, at 3.4%, compared to the rest of the world, at 2.4%. Finally, trade between CW members is three times higher when they belong to an existing regional trade agreement (F10, 011, F13).

The aim of this paper is to provide further empirical evidence on the relation between exchange rate volatility, currency unions and trade. The novelties with respect to previous research are threefold. First, monthly trade and exchange rate data are used to take into account the short term effects of volatility on the bilateral exchange rate. Second, disaggregated trade data are used to deal with differences among industries and between final and intermediate goods. Finally, the existence of zero trade flows is taken into account by distinguishing between the extensive and the intensive margins of trade. Investigating the impact of exchange rate volatility and the Euro at the same time allows us to disentangle the effect of a common currency beyond the elimination of any variation in the exchange rate. Furthermore, the developments of the past years with the financial crisis and the EU enlargement to the East are taken into account, yielding additional findings and policy implications.

1 The Gravity of Arms Abstract The aim of this paper is to investigate the determinants of international arms transfers in a gravity model framework . By distinguishing between the decision to export arms (extensive margin) and the value of the arms exported (intensive margin), while also considering its interdependence, is what differentiates this paper from previous research . A theoretically - justified gravity model of trade augmented with political and security motives is estimated using a two - stage panel data approach for 104 exporting countries over the period from 1950 to 2007. In addition to the usual gravity variables related to the economic mass of the trading countries and the trade cost factors, the model is extended with political and security factors. T he level of democracy in both trading partners , political differences between trading partners and voting similarity with the United States in the UN General Assembly of the countries engaged in trade are the main political factors , whereas the existence of conflicts, military pacts and embargoes are taken as security motives . The key result indicates that both political and security motives are an important determinant of an arms trade , but their effects on the extensive margin of exports (the decision to order a transfer) differs from their effect on the intensive margin (average value of exports) . Moreover , the relative importance of the fa ctors under study has changed since 1989 . In the post - Cold War period , countries that are less democratic are more likely to export arms , military pacts are less relevant and embargoes play a role .

Flows of remittances to Pakistan are being increasingly viewed as a relatively attractive source of external finance, which can help to foster development and manage economic shocks. Remittances have become a major source of revenue, surpassing the volume of foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA) that the country receives. This study focuses primarily on the stability, cyclicality and stabilization impacts of remittances to Pakistan. It is evident that foreign flows exhibit different types of volatility; remittances are found to be a less volatile source of external finance than FDI and ODA; they are also found to be counter-cyclical and stabilizing, thus serving to stabilize the recipient economy in times of economic downturns. ODA appears to be a-cyclical and stabilizing, whereas FDI emerges as pro-cyclical and destabilizing. Furthermore, remittances are insensitive to cyclical fluctuations in the sending countries. We also consider a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR)-based identification in order to examine the responses of financial flows to innovation in receiving and sending economies. We confirm the counter-cyclical mechanism of remittances with respect to Pakistani output. In particular, our results indicate that remittance flows to Pakistan are mainly explained by the economic conditions in the country.

AbstractIn this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on CO2emissions using a sample of 170 countries over the period 1992–2009. We propose the use of a difference-in-differences estimator with matching to address the endogeneity of the policy variable, namely Kyoto commitments. Countries are matched according to observable characteristics to create a suitable counterfactual. We correspondingly estimate a panel data model for the whole sample and the matched sample and compare the results to those obtained using an instrumental variable approach. The main results indicate that Kyoto Protocol commitments have a measurable reducing effect on CO2emissions, indicating that a treaty often deemed a 'failure' may in fact be producing some non-negligible effects for those who signed it.

Formal remittance flows to Pakistan have shown noticeable growth over the past decade. Using bilateral remittance data for 23 major source countries, this study examines the external and internal factors driving these remittance flows during the period 2001-2011. We estimate a gravity model for bilateral remittance flows using a variety of panel data techniques suitable to control for unobserved heterogeneity as well as simultaneous bias existing between remittances and migrant's stock. The main novelty with respect to the existing literature is the use of transaction costs of remittances as a superior alternative to geographical distance to proxy for remittance costs. We find that several factors have a significant effect on remittances, such as improved economic conditions in the receiving country, Pakistani migrant's stock in the source country, and financial development and political stability in the recipient country. Geographical distance, economic conditions and the unemployment rate in the source countries, however, do not appear to play a substantial role. We also find that geographical distance seems to be a poor proxy for the cost of remitting. This can be better understood in terms of migrant networks and improvements in receiving and source country financial services. While the effect of transaction costs of remittances' on remittance flows is found to be negative, its significance is not robust to changes in the specification of the estimated models.

This paper focuses on the 2004 enlargement of the European Union to the East and treats it as a natural experiment to investigate two issues: first, whether there has been a trade creation effect in final and intermediate goods and second, to what extent this effect has been more pronounced for final or for intermediate goods. Using difference-in-differences analysis, we find that the effect of the 2004 EU enlargement has been positive for both intermediate and final goods trade, and it is in general greater for final goods. Using a generalized gravity model of trade that controls for the multilateral resistance and bilateral time-invariant factors, we estimate an increase in bilateral trade of 28% for final goods and 24% for intermediates. However, the effects are heterogeneous by sub-sector and indicate that the main trade gains were for non-durable consumer goods and food and beverages primary and processed products.

We reexamine the effect of economic development on the level of democ- racy based on the data sets of Acemoglu et al. (Am Econ Rev 98(3):808–842, 2008) with a novel regression specification utilizing a zero–one-inflated beta distribution for the response variable democracy. Contrary to the results of Acemoglu et al. ( 2008), some support for a positive association between income and democracy is found when assuming that the variance of explanatory variables is heterogenous. In particular, our results show that rising income is associated with a probability of becoming fully democratic, but income is not generally associated with the mean level of democracy

Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent international migration can be explained by climatic variations. A gravity model of migration augmented with average temperature and precipitation in the country of origin is estimated using a panel data set of 142 sending countries for the period 1995 to 2006. We find two primary results. First, temperature is positively correlated with migration. Second, stronger changes in precipitation are also associated with aligned, but small changes in migration. Both effects are robust to various model modifications. Furthermore, we present initial explorations into the channels relating climate changes with migration via agriculture and internal conflict.


JEL Codes
F22, Q54

We reexamine the effect of economic development on the level of democracy based on the data sets of Acemoglu et al. (2008) with a novel regression specification utilizing a zero-one-inflated beta distribution for the response variable democracy. The zero-one-inflated beta distribution is more appropriate for continuous but bounded responses with non-zero probabilities for the boundaries of the support than the other frequently used distributions such as the normal. Contrary to the results of Acemoglu et al. (2008), some support of causality is found particularly when explaining the variance of the democracy variables. Since our analysis highlights that the distribution of democracy is bimodal, we approximate the modes using two separate samples of OECD and non-OECD countries. Our results indicate that there are differences not only in the mean but also in other features of the response distribution between the two groups. For instance, higher incomes are associated with higher democracy levels in the OECD sub-sample, however for non-OECD the association is insignificant.