Insufficiently flexible labour markets combined with high welfare costs are often thought to be the main cause of unsatisfactory growth in Europe. This paper uses the OECD data on regulation of the product and labour market to confirm the difference in the extent of regulation between US and...

This paper argues that the empirical trade-growth relationship should be modelled using a dynamic panel data approach and that it is best estimated with Blundell and Bond’s (1999) system-GMM estimator. This procedure remedies some econometric problems such as regressor endogeneity, measurement...

The re-distribution of income from labour to capital, from workers to top-managers, and from low income households to the rich has been an important feature of financedominated capitalism since the early 1980s. After the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession in 2007-9, the recovery has...

The empirical literature on the impact of corporate taxes on economic growth reaches ambiguous conclusions: corporate tax cuts increase, reduce, or do not significantly affect growth. We apply meta-regression methods to a novel dataset with 441 estimates from 42 primary studies. There is...

The literature on aid has come a long way in recent years, and as a result we now know much more about aid effectiveness than possibly ever before. But significant gaps in knowledge remain. One such gap is the effectiveness of aid in the so-called ‘fragile states’, countries with critically...

A windfall of natural resource revenue (or foreign aid) faces government with choices of how to manage public debt, investment, and the distribution of funds for consumption, particularly if the windfall is both anticipated and temporary. We show that the permanent income hypothesis prescription...

The European Commission has set a target date of 2025 for Western Balkan EU accession, while also outlining a broader new strategy which includes Brussels taking a more active role in solving political disputes in the region, and upgrading infrastructure as part of the Berlin Process. We welcome...