This paper analyzes the economic growth trajectories of post-communist countries that emerged following the collapse of the USSR. I treat the Soviet Union's sudden dissolution as a natural experiment that triggered rapid institutional changes, providing a unique opportunity to iso- late...

Access to credit remains a universal challenge for firms, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). While numerous studies have examined the determinants of credit access, focusing primarily on borrower characteristics, lender policies, and formal institutional factors such as...

One of the beautiful things about football is that it brings people from all over the world together to share their love of the game. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of football on happiness using the number of points a country has in FIFA. To achieve this, we specify and estimate...

The objective of the paper is to assess and compare the resilience of the post-Covid US and Eurozone economies. Quarterly growth rates (annualized) of the Real GDP of US and the Eurozone are forecasted between Q4 2023 and Q4 2050. Two sets of forecasts are generated: forecasts using historical...