Suchergebnisse

This paper analyzes the effect of world governance indicators on inward foreign direct investment. The sample covers 38 developed and 82 developing countries between 2002 and 2018. The results of the system GMM regressions suggest that governance indicators are important determinants of inward FDI for developed countries. Moreover, it is shown that it is important to control for dynamic effects. In comparison, for developing countries, other country characteristics – the mean tariff rate – are more important than the institutional setting.

This paper analyzes the impact of ethnic heterogeneity and military conflict on the degree of regional consumption risk-sharing in Ukraine. Ethnicity and violent conflicts can influence risk-sharing e.g. through social capital, ethnic fractionalization, migration, and remittances. The sample consists of 25 Ukrainian oblasts and covers the highly volatile period from 2003 to 2016. Our results suggest that the degree of consumption risk-sharing is comparably high; between 70 and 80 percent on average. Moreover, consumption risk-sharing is significantly higher in the regions with a large Russian minority, which are enjoying special treatment by Russia. By contrast, the degree of financial development, as proxied by deposit and loan share in GRP, does not significantly affect the regional degree of consumption risk-sharing. Furthermore, we apply spatial models to control for spatial dependence across regions. Results are confirmed and it is shown that spatial correlation is important. Finally, we show that the recent geopolitical conflict in east Ukraine changed the regional degree of consumption risk-sharing.

AbstractThe onset of the war on drugs in Mexico at the beginning of 21st century had far‐reaching effects on its citizens, including most obviously, an unprecedented increase in the homicide rate. We analyse the correlation between violence on social capital in the 32 federal states of Mexico from January 2004 to December 2016. Given the lack of data in the conflict regions of Mexico, we apply the indirect approach proposed by Guriev and Melnikov (2016), which uses internet search engine data to proxy social capital. Our results show a negative relationship between violence and social capital in Mexico. Moreover, we document a positive spatial correlation for social capital. Overall, we present an example of how the analysis of internet‐based data can contribute to the understanding of socioeconomic developments in conflict regions with unreliable standard data.