The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a GDP per capita level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget....

Gravity models of international trade have been frequently applied to estimate the impact of common (official or spoken) language on bilateral trade. This study provides a meta-analysis based on 701 language effects collected from 81 academic articles. On average, a common (official or spoken)...

Desde el año 2004 el Ministerio de Hacienda publica anualmente el Marco Fiscal de Mediano Plazo (MFMP) en el cual se presentan las proyecciones oficiales sobre ingresos y gastos del gobierno central para los siguientes diez años. Como es de esperar, dichas proyecciones están sujetas a altos...

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on profits using panel data for 19 high-income OECD countries during the period 1975-1999. We estimate a profit equation in which profits depend on a set of fiscal variables. Our empirical method is based on a consistent treatment of the...

La prestación de los servicios de infraestructura en zonas aisladas y marginadas es un desafío importante en cualquier país ya que la alta dispersión de la población eleva los costos de prestación, y la baja capacidad de pago dificulta su financiamiento. En Colombia, estas dificultades se...

"El propósito de este documento es, precisamente, elaborar dicho diagnóstico y formular una serie de reomendaciones para logar el fortalecimiento de las instituciones encargadas de la regulación y la supervisión de las empresas proveedoras de servicios públicos en Colombia. Este...

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

An emerging literature on the geography of bohemians argues that a region’s lifestyle and cultural amenities explain, at least partly, the unequal distribution of highly qualified people across space, which in turn, explains geographic disparities in economic growth. However, to date, there...

While the direct impact of geographic endowments on prosperity is present in all countries, in former colonies, geography has also affected colonization policies and, therefore, institutional outcomes. Using non-colonized countries as a control group, I re-examine the theories put forward by La...

In the 1990’s descentralization in Colombia, a process which had begun a decade earlier, was sharply accelerated. The percentage of current Central Government revenues that are automatically transferred to the regional governments quickly jumped from about 20% to over 40%. Many analysts...