There is no consensus about how globalization - trade and foreign investments - affects poverty reduction. Using household survey data, this study contributes to the empirical literature on globalization and poverty by analyzing the household-level implications of increased foreign investments...

This paper documents that a large fraction of trade flows at the firm level consists of simultaneous imports and exports in identical products, narrowly defined at the 8-digit product classification, which we call Pass-On Trade, POT. We use data on imports and exports at the firm–product level...

In developed economies, services form an increasing proportion of inputs employed by manufacturing firms. While downstream firms act in a very competitive environment, services often operate in protected or highly regulated markets. In this paper, I empirically investigate whether the degree of...

The paper investigates how efficiency of business environment and corruption (informal payments and state capture) affect the microeconomic performance of firms. The novelty of the paper is to look at these effects in the interaction with the firm ownership. We use firm-level micro data...

As recently as a century ago, one out of two people in Europe was employed in the agricultural sector. Today agriculture represents only a small fraction of total employment in most EU member states. What makes this decline in agricultural employment even more striking is that this evolution has...

This paper examines the role of international openness on the change of firm productivity in Southeastern Europe (SEE). This is a crucial question for middle income countries. Using firm-level data for six transition economies over the period 1994-2002, we identify whether foreign ownership and...

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of ten transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the...

Tax competition within the EU is fiercer than in the rest of the OECD with tax rates falling rapidly. This paper analyzes heterogeneity in corporate tax rate changes between EU-15 countries as a function of the proximity to the EU-10 new member states. The average corporate tax rate in the new...

The 2003 reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) under Commissioner Fischler was the most radical in the history of the CAP. This paper analyzes the causes and constraints of the reform. The paper argues that an unusual combination of pro-reform factors came together in...

This paper studies the impact of external reference values on managerial compensation contracts. We consider the effect of adoption of non-binding pay norms on actual remuneration behavior using a unique country example. We find that introduction of pay norms changed the reference values for...