An important question in development studies is how abundance of natural resources affects long-term economic growth. No consensus answer, however, has yet emerged, with approximately 40% of empirical papers finding a negative effect, 40% finding no effect, and 20% finding a positive effect....

We examine how unconventional monetary policy of the European Central Bank influences macroeconomic stability in Central and Eastern European economies. We estimate various panel vector autoregressions using monthly data from 2008-2014. Using the shadow policy rate and central bank assets as...

We examine how the transparency of the European Central Bankś monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the European Union have in this institution. We use nearly half a million individual responses from the European Commissionś Eurobarometer survey from 2000-2011 and...

We analyze the relationship between institutional quality and firm efficiency. Using rich data on firms in the European Union between 2005 and 2012, we show that high institutional quality lowers the share of persistently inefficiently used assets. The adverse effect of low institutional quality...

The paper studies financing constraints for R&D over the latest boom and bust episode in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Given that financial and venture capital markets in CEE are thin in comparison to those in high-income economies and that many of CEE countries experienced a credit crunch...

We examine the effect of natural resource abundance on economic performance during the 1996-2011 period in the 15 independent countries that formerly comprised the Soviet Union. These countries were a largely homogeneous group with respect to institutional development, liberalization and...

An intense discussion is taking place in International Political Economy on the influence of economic ideas on institutional change. Case studies so far have, however, mainly focused on the Western industrialised countries and research seems to be biased towards cases in which new ideas caused...

Some immigrants try to keep their ethnicity hidden while others become ever deeply more mired in their home culture. We argue that among immigrants this struggle manifests itself in the ethnic goods they choose to consume. Different types of ethnic goods have vastly different effects on...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries is often associated with higher economic growth due to knowledge and technology spillovers to local firms. One way how FDI speeds up growth is that it facilitates the manufacturing of more sophisticated products by local firms. So far,...

We provide a theory and empirical evidence indicating that the rotation of ruling elites in conjunction with elites´ asset ownership could improve property rights protection in non-democracies. The mechanism that upholds property rights is based on elites´ concern about the security of their...