In a three-country model of endogenous trade agreements, we study the implications of the Most Favored Nation Clause (MFN) when countries are free to form discriminatory preferential trade agreements (PTAs). While PTA members discriminate against non-member countries, MFN requires non-members to...

We consider a dynamic setting in which two sovereign states with overlapping ownership claims on a resource/asset first arm and then choose whether to resolve their dispute violently through war or peacefully through settlement. Both approaches depend on the states’ military capacities, but...

Policy makers in the EU and elsewhere are concerned that unilateral carbon pricing induces carbon leakage through relocation of emission-intensive and trade-exposed industries to other regions. A common measure to mitigate such leakage is to combine an emission trading system (ETS) with...

We develop a simple structural model of value added tax (VAT) compliance, and estimate it using widely available national accounts data to learn about compliance in countries where little is currently known. International border controls improve VAT compliance, generating a correlation between...

This paper explores empirically whether and how FDI is affected if multinationals’ home countries change taxation of foreign earnings by switching from worldwide to territorial taxation. Our analysis employs data for German inbound FDI based on the ultimate investing country concept. We use a...

In June 2018, an agreement between key EU institutions – the Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council – was reached after a long-lasting discourse over the 2030 EU climate and energy policy package. This paper offers a comprehensive assessment of the EU package, with its...

This paper examines the causal effects of shifts in international food commodity prices on euro area inflation dynamics using a structural VAR model that is identified with an external instrument (i.e. a series of global harvest shocks). The results reveal that exogenous food commodity price...

Macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area periphery was more recessionary than pre-crisis imbalances would have warranted. To make this claim, this paper uses a Propensity Score Matching Model to produce counterfactuals for the Eurozone crisis countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain)...

We study whether a democracy improves a measure of individual wellbeing; human heights. Drawing on individual-level datasets, we test the hypothesis using a battery of eight different measures of democracy and derived averages, and include models accounting for several confounders, regional and...

Using a gravity-like approach, we study how Covid-19 deaths and lockdown policies affected countries’ imports from China during 2020. We find that a country’s own Covid-19 deaths and lockdowns significantly reduced its imports from China, suggesting that the negative demand effects prevailed...