Suchergebnisse

This note reconsiders the results obtained by Matsen and Roisland [Eur. J. Political Economy 21 (2005) 365-384] by dropping the simplifying assumption that the median of country-specific shocks is equal to their mean. Majority voting then increases the volatility of the chosen interest rate without giving member countries a sufficient probability of having their domestic shocks absorbed by the common monetary policy. It thus results in lower welfare than other decision rules. When the variances of domestic shocks sufficiently differ, voting may however reduce the volatility of the interest rate and raise welfare in more stable countries. [Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V.]

This paper assesses the relationship between the impact of corruption on growth & investment & the quality of governance in a sample of 63 to 71 countries between 1970 & 1998. Like previous studies, we find a negative effect of corruption on both growth & investment. Unlike previous studies, we find that corruption has a negative impact on growth independently from its impact on investment. These impacts are, however, different depending on the quality of governance. They tend to worsen when indicators of the quality of governance deteriorate. This supports the "sand the wheels" view on corruption & contradicts the "grease the wheels" view, which postulates that corruption may help compensate bad governance. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 2 Appendixes, 37 References. Adapted from the source document.

We apply portfolio theory to assess the consequences in terms of risk sharing of the evolution of the industry mix of EU countries between 1986 & 1997, & of the changes in the membership configurations of both economic & monetary unions. We compute a measure of risk-return performance for EU countries, by considering countries as collections of industries, & observe that risk-return performance improved in most countries. We find that the EU9 is marginally more efficient than the other historical EU groupings & that the Euro Zone might slightly benefit from the inclusion of the UK. 5 Tables, 1 Figure, 29 References. [Copyright 2003 Elsevier B.V.]

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative impact on the size of the underground economy. However, once output is corrected for the shadow economy, the relationship between institutions and output becomes weaker. The impact of institutions on total ('corrected') factor productivity becomes insignificant. Differences in corrected output must then be attributed to differences in factor endowments. These results survive several tests for robustness. Adapted from the source document.

This paper investigates the timing of the impact of changes in checks and balances on macroeconomic efficiency in a panel of countries. Using Battese and Coelli's one-stage approach, we find that increasing checks and balances results in greater efficiency. Furthermore, the impact of institutional changes on efficiency is delayed, with a full effect showing after five to six years. This finding remains robust after distinguishing developed and developing countries, including country-fixed effects and using alternative functional forms of the production frontier and alternative measures of checks and balances. The relation is also robust to controlling for endogeneity. Adapted from the source document.