The recent experience of a Great Recession has brought the effectiveness of fiscal policy back into focus. Fiscal multipliers do, however, vary greatly over time and place. between wealth inequality and the magnitude of fiscal multipliers. To explain this finding, we develop a life-cycle,...

Since the creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), health became a strategic driver in regional politics in South America in two ways: by redefining trans-border practices through health policies and institutions within the region; and by projecting (regional) health policies...

The Brazilian electricity market has certain particularities that contribute to considerably distinguish it from other markets. With a continental interconnected transmission system in which around 70% of the total installed capacity comes from hydropower plants, this electricity market recently...

One of the stated objectives of recent ‘mega’ preferential trade agreements (PTAs) being negotiated by large trading powers is to address the trade-impeding effects of differences in national regulation. Past experience demonstrates there are serious limitations in what can be achieved in...

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was “harvested” from the broader Doha round. This...

he current EU Asylum policy is widely seen as ineffective and unfair. We propose an EU-wide market for tradable quotas on both refugees and asylum-seekers coupled with a matching mechanism linking countries' and migrants' preferences. We show that the proposed system can go a long way towards...

This paper assesses the EU postal sector policy of the second Barroso Commission from 2010 to 2014. The main goal of the Commission is to achieve a single European market for postal services. The paper distinguishes between the following three objectives, whose implementation should lead to the...

Scholarship on migrant care work argued that we need to broaden our understanding of the international division of reproductive labour by incorporating into the analysis other agents of social reproduction besides the household such as the non-profit sector, the market and the State. In response...

Negotiators have reached a deal on a limited series of issues WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali (3–6 December 2013), one of these being trade facilitation. Based on a quantitative assessment taking into account the detail of the last proposals circulated, we argue however that due to the...

Conventional knowledge on the effectiveness of gender quotas for enhancing women’s political participation has, to date, been unanimous on the superiority of quotas in proportional representation (PR) systems. Yet this view overlooks the many possible alternatives to implementing gender quotas...