How does implementing harsh economic reforms influence voting behaviour? And how do the patterns of political support change over the course of transition? We analyse these issues using data from a sequence of 11 opinion surveys conducted in the Czech Republic between 1990-98. We find that -...

We analyse support for EU membership as expressed in voting patterns in the candidate countries’ referenda on EU membership, using regional referendum results and individual survey data on voting intentions. We find that favourable individual and regional characteristics are positively...

This Paper utilizes a unique dataset on votes cast by Czech and Polish migrants in their recent national elections to investigate the impact of institutional, political and economic characteristics on migrants’ voting behaviour. The political preferences of migrants are strikingly different...

The gravity model of trade is used to assess the economic consequences of new borders, which arose in the wake of break-ups of multinational federations in Eastern Europe. The intensity of trade relations among the constituent parts of Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union and the Baltics was very high...

Policy discussions to ameliorate socioeconomic (SES) inequalities are increasingly focused on investments in early childhood. Yet such interventions are costly to implement, and clear evidence on the optimal time to intervene to yield a high economic and social return in the future is meagre....

This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental background on child health. We are particularly concerned with the extent to which their finding that income effects on child health are the result of spurious correlation rather than some causal mechanism. A...

Many theoretical models of transition are driven by the assumption that economic decision making is subject to political constraints. In this paper we test whether the 'winners' and 'losers' of economic reform influenced voting behaviour in the first five national elections in the Czech...

This paper provides a brief review of the economic rationale for investing in early childhood. It discusses the optimal timing of intervention, with reference to recent work in developmental neuroscience, and asks how early is early? It motivates the need for early intervention by providing an...

This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental background on child health. We are particularly concerned with the extent to which their finding that income effects on child health are the result of spurious correlation rather than some causal mechanism. A...