This paper quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators (WBGI). Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2008 we show that pre-accession incentives provided by EU and...

In this paper we analyze the impact of the economic reforms implemented in 1980s and of the Custom Union Agreement of 1996 on the intra-industry trade in Turkey. Using the panel data for 15 trading partners of Turkey and the sample period 1970-2005, we record the positive impact of both reforms...

Using annual data for the period 1992-2012, this paper examines trade flows between China and its main trade partners in Asia, North America and Europe, and whether increasing trade has led to industrial structural adjustment and changes in China's trade patterns. The analysis is based on both...

This paper investigates Turkey?s sectoral trade flows to the EU based on panel data from the period 1988 to 2002. Turkey?s sixteen most important export sectors are analysed. Emphasis is placed on the role of price competition, EU protection, and transport costs in the export trade between...

In this paper a new method to estimate the equivalence scale elasticity using individual panel data on income satisfaction will be developed. In contrast to other subjective approaches, the present one benefits from the fact that no direct cardinal individual welfare function has to be...

We link life-satisfaction data to inequality of the pre-government income distribution at the regional level, to estimate the degree of inequality aversion. In addition, we investigate whether a reduction in inequality by the state increases individual well-being. We find that Germans are...

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' leverage and macroeconomic uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts that as macroeconomic uncertainty increases the firm will decrease its optimal level of...

This article contributes to the literature on innovation and development by identifying the determinants of innovation, and the role of intellectual property rights, in industrialized and developing countries. Controlling for sample selection, I find that, in general, the level of intellectual...

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries. We use quarterly data in the 1980.1-2005.4 period and exclude EMU countries. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant index of central bank independence with...

This paper tackles the issue of cross-section dependence for the monetary exchange rate model in the presence of unobserved common factors using panel data from 1973 until 2007 for 19 OECD countries. Applying a principal component analysis we distinguish between common factors and idiosyncratic...