The eruption of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt was ensued by deterioration in FDI inflows. Whether a new Middle East free of corruption accompanying previous dictatorships will offset the negative ramifications of the uprisings and enhance FDI in the long run remains debatable. Since the...

This paper investigates the competitive conditions in the Greek manufacturing industry, estimates the net and the total welfare losses due to the possible existence of market power and investigates factors affecting the market power at sectoral level and over time. The bootstrap method is...

This paper investigates the causes behind the Euroland crisis, particularly Germany's role in it. It is argued that the crisis is not primarily a 'sovereign debt crisis', but rather a (twin) banking and balance of payments crisis. Intra-area competitiveness and current account imbalances, and...

This study empirically identifies the impact of various macroeconomic factors on the default risk premium. Using monthly data for the period 1970--2010 for the US, our estimations indicate that the monetary policy aggregates, risk-free interest rate, term structure of interest rates, inflation,...

This paper puts forth a Neo-Kaleckian open economy model of two countries in order to investigate adjustment of US--China external imbalances. First, a stylized fixed mark-up model is presented, and discussed based on graphical analysis. Second, we present estimates of bilateral income and price...

This article discusses the significance of the recent growth in household credit across a range of middle-income economies. This growth is understood primarily as a result of policy, including the promotion of individual borrowing as a means to fund access to housing, education and health. A...

In the run up to the financial crisis of 2007--2009 many developing nations were subject to massive inflows of capital, capital that their financial systems found difficult to absorb. One of a number of policy options to respond to such inflows is unremunerated reserve requirements (URR). Two...

In the last decade special attention has been focused on estimating a firm's efficiency and productivity; Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) has been one of the most used techniques that allows the separation of inefficiency from stochastic noise, assuming homogeneous technology is available to...

This paper empirically investigates the effect of five business environment indicators and four measures of institutional quality on FDI inflows in GCC countries. The empirical results reveal that the time required to start a business, the time required to enforce a contract, the time required...

The relative lack of competitive pressure in product markets and lower investment in both fundamental and applied innovation are among the potential factors that have been put forward to explain Canada's weak productivity performance with respect to the US. Since competition is generally seen as...