Suchergebnisse

The initiation of IMF agreements in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) follows an inherently different process than in other regions. While economic conditions explain part of the divergence in lending decisions, some economic but also political factors have systematically different effects on IMF lending in SSA. Studies that account for selection into IMF programs should take this into account in order to increase the reliability of their findings.

Migrants into European countries are often less educated than European natives. We analyse whether migrants' children are more or less likely than natives' children to achieve upward educational mobility across generations, and study differences in the factors, which contribute to differences in mobility for the two groups. We find that migrants' descendants are more often upwardly mobile (and less often downwardly mobile) than their native peers in the majority of countries studied, and show that the main factor contributing to these patterns is the education level of parents. Although a lower parental education means that their children are less likely to access the same amount of human, social and financial capital as children of more highly educated parents, migrants' descendants over the last two generations were able to make significant progress in reducing education gaps with natives.

SummaryWe study the reasons for differences in welfare benefit receipt between immigrants and natives in 16 EU countries using Oaxaca‐Blinder decompositions of a Heckman model. Differences in welfare benefit receipt diminish or disappear altogether after controlling for differences in characteristics of the two groups. The largest part of this is explained by differences in benefit take‐up rather than benefit levels conditional on benefit receipt. The characteristics contributing most to native–immigrant welfare wedges in contributory benefits are differences in age. For non‐contributory benefits, differences in household size and composition are most important. Overall results thus suggest a limited capability of selective immigration policies to reduce welfare benefit receipt among immigrants.

"We investigate the effect of the relative welfare dependence of immigrants on attitudes toward further immigration of different groups of the population in a pooled cross-section of 24 European countries for the 2004 - 2010 period. Explicitly controlling for the dependence of immigrants and natives on welfare benefits we find that in countries with higher take-up rates among immigrants relative to natives pro-immigration attitudes, very robustly, increase more strongly with increasing educational attainment and, slightly less robustly, decline more strongly with the age of natives. Within the group of immigrants, by contrast, the impact of age on pro-immigration attitudes is more favorable with increasing relative benefit take-up of immigrants." (Author's abstract, © 2016 Elsevier) ((en))

"We investigate the effect of the relative welfare dependence of immigrants on attitudes toward further immigration of different groups of the population in a pooled cross-section of 24 European countries for the 2004 - 2010 period. Explicitly controlling for the dependence of immigrants and natives on welfare benefits we find that in countries with higher take-up rates among immigrants relative to natives pro-immigration attitudes, very robustly, increase more strongly with increasing educational attainment and, slightly less robustly, decline more strongly with the age of natives. Within the group of immigrants, by contrast, the impact of age on pro-immigration attitudes is more favorable with increasing relative benefit take-up of immigrants." (Author's abstract, © 2016 Elsevier).

AbstractWe analyse the nature of robust determinants of differences in democracy levels across countries taking explicitly into account uncertainty in the choice of covariates and spatial spillovers. We make use of recent developments in Bayesian model averaging to assess the effect of a large number of potential factors affecting democratisation processes and account for several specifications of spatial linkages. Our results indicate that spatial spillovers are present in the data even after controlling for a large number of geographical covariates. Addressing the determinants of democracy without modelling such spillovers may lead to flawed inference about the nature of the determinants of democratisation processes. In particular, our results emphasise the role played by Muslim religion, population size, trade volumes, English language, natural resource rents, GDP per capita, being a MENA country and the incidence of armed conflicts as factors affecting democracy robustly.

Understanding the global energy network and the developments of energy efficiency is key to advance energy regulation and fight climate change. We develop a global panel dataset on energy usage inventories based on territorial production, final production and consumption over 1997-2014. We apply structural decomposition analysis to isolate energy efficiency changes and study the effectiveness of the European Union Energy Services Directive (2006/32/EC) on energy efficiency. High-income regions are net-importers of embodied energy and use a larger share of non-renewable energy than developing countries. The effectiveness of the Directive is mixed. The different ambition of national energy policies of the European Union members and some complementarity in supply chains underlie the different dynamics found. High-income countries share efficiency gains and changes in the mix of energy sources. These trends are not specific to the European Union. Energy policies in high-income countries are less effective for energy footprints. Our findings are indicative of energy leakage. Energy regulation should account for global supply chains and target energy footprints.