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Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Kyklos is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses cross–national data from happiness surveys, jointly with data on per capita income and pollution, to examine how self–reported well–being varies with prosperity and environmental conditions. This approach allows us to show that citizens care about prosperity and the environment, and to calculate the trade–off people are willing to make between them. The paper finds that the effect of urban air pollution on subjective well–being shows up as a considerable monetary valuation of improved air quality. For instance, a representative German citizen would need to be given more than 1900 $ per year in order to accept the typical urban air pollution level prevailing in Japan. The subjective marginal valuation of air pollution is compared with marginal abatement costs from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper belongs to the rather young research program of positive constitutional economics, which is interested in explaining the emergence of particular institutions and organizations and their change over time. Politicians' decisions to delegate power domestically or internationally are made within the framework of an existing constitution. In that sense, our focus is on post-constitutional choice. Yet, by establishing new organizations, either domestically or internationally, politicians create new institutions that might themselves become influential in interpreting the constitution. In that sense, the decision to create a new agency can be viewed also as a decision to modify an existing constitutional order. It seems, therefore, adequate to describe the scope of this paper as the analysis of post-constitutional constitutional choice. Most of the hypotheses to be generated take an (exogenously given) constitutional structure as independent variable, which can be used to explain both the extent and kind of (domestic or international) delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of Chinese activities in sub-Saharan African countries with respect to the growth performance of economies in that region. Using a Solow-type growth model and panel data for the period 1991 to 2010, we find that African economies that export natural resources have benefited from positive terms-of-trade effects. In addition, there is evidence for displacement effects of African firms due to competition from China. On the other hand, Chinese foreign investment and aid in Africa does not appear to have a significant impact on African growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it tests whether an effect of over‐indebtedness on self‐assessed health exists. Fixed‐effects panel regression models based on panel data for 25 European countries show that being in arrears increases the likelihood of reporting bad/very bad health. However, effects are weak in terms of economic significance. The second research question focuses on the effect heterogeneity of overindebtedness among different European countries. It asks whether country‐level factors moderate the effect of problematic debt on health. These macro‐variables are the accessibility of health services, debt management and debt discharge regulations, dispute resolution with banks/insurance companies, and the social stigma of being over‐indebted/in debt. Descriptive analyses showed that some aspects of the legal debt‐collection process (e.g., higher costs of debt collection) are associated with a stronger effect of over‐indebtedness on subjectively assessed poor health. There is also some evidence that easier dispute resolution with banks and insurance companies is correlated with smaller effects of over‐indebtedness on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Spanish and French colonial education included several features that restricted education. Many of them persisted long after independence. Against this background, this paper econometrically studies whether in the recent past the colonial legacy still affected schooling in the ex-colonies of these two former colonial powers - and, for comparison, in the ex-colonies of Britain, the third of the former big three colonial powers. Using a large sample of countries and numerous controls, it finds substantial negative effects on both secondary enrollment and average years of schooling in former French and, especially, in former Spanish colonies. The negative effects on females are particularly large. By contrast, there are no effects in former British colonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit the analysis of cross-country convergence by combining spatial econometrics and panel quantile regressions to estimate conditional β-convergence models. Moreover, we use both exogenous and endogenous weight matrices. Our results show that indeed the effects of initial per capita income, investment rate, population growth and human capital on growth rates vary considerably across the estimated quantiles. Convergence is not a generalized phenomenon across the conditional growth distribution. Moreover, while using exogenous spatial weight matrices does not substantially alter the findings found in a-spatial models, it appears that endogenous weights dramatically affect the estimates of the convergence process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences in productivity, if any, that are unobserved to researchers may produce an omitted variable bias in gender gap studies. Finding a subpopulation with less acute differences in unobserved characteristics would allow this concern to be addressed. This paper shows that gays and lesbians are one such interesting group-for the intra-household division of labor and its effects on market productivity cannot be sex-determined in this subpopulation. Indeed, there are substantial intra-household variations in labor market outcomes and other characteristics; the patterns and magnitudes are similar to different-sex households. Simultaneously, the gender wage gap between gays and lesbians is much smaller than in the heterosexual population; in specifications that control for geographic location it is near zero. These findings suggest that the intra-household division of labor is an important factor driving gender differences in labor market outcomes. Such an interpretation is consistent with recent studies that control for productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that democracy enhances technological change, the most important determinant of long-term economic growth. It first presents an argument on how and why dictators restrict civil liberties and diffusion of information to survive in office, even if this reduces their personal consumption. The argument predicts that autocracies have slower technological change than democracies, which in turn impairs GDP per capita growth rates. These and other implications from the argument are tested empirically, and so are implications from alternative explanations on the association between democracy and technological change. Drawing on an extensive global dataset, with some time series going back to the early 19th century, the paper reports robust evidence that democracy increases not only technology-induced growth but also net economic growth rates. Notably, the results hold when accounting for the endogeneity of democracy, country-fixed effects, and sample-selection bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A list of books received by the publication is presented, including "Macroeconomic Theories & Policies for the 1990s: A Scandinavian Perspective," edited by Bruno Amoroso and Jesper Jespersen, "Economic Stabilization and Debt in Developing Countries," by Richard N. Cooper, and "A Primer in Game Theory," by Robert Gibbons.

Part I. Presents views concerning the exchange rates data from 1970-1914 for Europe and North America. Comments on various publications about exchange rates; Information on Jurgen Schneider's publication on exchange rate; More information.

Most industrial countries have incurred a sharp rise in public debt over the past twenty years. The paper doubts the sole responsibility of economic factors for this fiscally detrimental trend. It emphasizes the crucial role of certain politico-economic mechanisms for the large budget deficits in representative democracies. The paper argues in favour of a constitutional reform if society is to be able to protect future generations from the adverse distributional consequences of public debt. Given the long-run effects of continued government borrowing analyzed in Section II, and given the politico-economic interactions described in Section III, two reform proposals are finally derived in Section IV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting savings goals can increase wealth accumulation behaviour, yet it depends on how challenging the goals are. Using rarely available savings goal data from 1,760 clients of an advisory investment firm, we identify gender attitudinal differences in goal amounts: men choose more ambitious savings goals than women, independently from expected life‐long earnings. This, however, holds only for individuals living in a couple, for which men's savings goals reach the highest levels. Based on insights from qualitative research (56 semi‐structured interviews of 60 participants), we argue that these differences originate from gender‐normative roles assigned to members within the households. Most women are assigned to daily budget management, exacerbating worries about financial security issues in the short term and negatively impacting savings goals. This observation holds even when women, rather than men, manage long‐term investment for the household. Men's assignment to long‐term financial planning is related to optimism and ambition with regards to their savings goal choice, but these attitudes remain conditional on the fact that they do not deal with day‐to‐day budget management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers hints for prospective authors of KYKLOS, one of the best ranked general economics journals in Continental Europe. The paper must address succinctly with a topical economic and/or social issue of interest to general readers. Analyses on a certain topic must bear originality and the paper must go beyond the narrow boundaries of prevailing economics. Theoretical propositions should be backed by econometric tests and historical or circumstantial evidence.

Summary This paper estimates the effects of risky behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol, marijuana, risky sex) on subjective well‐being. To identify these effects from endogenous sorting, I use information from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a system of simultaneous equations for participation in four risky activities and formation of individual happiness. My results provide evidence that smoking and alcohol decrease subjective well‐being by 2.5% and 2.4%, respectively. By contrast, the relationship between having sex with multiple partners, although positive, is not statistically significant at conventional levels. Nevertheless, these effects dwindle over time until participation in any of these behaviors does not have a long‐run impact on well‐being, with the exception of smoking and alcohol consumption, which have a persistent negative impact on subjective well‐being. The results highlight the importance of controlling for endogeneity of risky behaviors and provide an explanation as to why most individuals who engage in such behaviors do not develop longer‐lasting addictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: A substantial literature exists on the effects of military expenditures on economic growth, yet no study has analyzed the effects of military occupation other than in anecdotal cases. This paper uses a panel of 214 countries from 1950 to 2013 to study how economic growth is impacted by different forms of military occupation. Transformative occupations aim to establish institutions to promote stability once the occupation ends, while subdual occupations are more malevolent in their objectives. Our results show that transformative occupations produce positive growth in occupied countries after the occupation period concludes. Separating these effects into the short run and long run, we find that while countries subject to a subdual occupation experience a short‐run increase in growth at the end of the occupation, countries with transformative occupation experience long‐run increases in growth. These findings are robust to the inclusion of traditional drivers of growth. Policy implications suggest that regional conflicts that are solved using military intervention may have lasting effects on growth as long as the intentions of the occupying force are transformative in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Many countries which experienced rising home prices (often described as bubbles) over the 2000s decade also ran large trade deficits. Some early research on the topic suggested that capital from trade surplus countries lowered borrowing costs and boosted housing values. In this scenario, the current account deficits and high home prices in bubble countries were driven in substantial part by capital flows from abroad. In contrast, some theoretical and empirical work suggests domestic factors‐rising home prices‐stimulate borrowing, which leads to current account deficits. In this more recent telling, it is domestic changes in bubble countries‐the increase in home values‐that drive trade imbalances, rather than the reverse. In this study, we investigate the interaction of both the current account and home prices for nine nations, with data spanning a minimum of the mid‐1990s to 2013, with the objective of determining whether external factors impact domestic housing markets. We use vector autoregressions and find strong evidence that the current account exerts a palpable effect on home values, even controlling for reverse causality and the effects of other variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on several suggestions for prospective authors of the journal "Kyklos". The first suggestion is that the paper should deal succinctly with an economic and/or social issues. The second suggestion is that the paper should not deal with minor differences. The third suggestion is that the papers should analyze a topic in an original way for e.g. in the case of a trade-off between originality and rigor, the editors tend to favor the former and the last suggestion is that the paper should cover inter-disciplinary approaches.

Based on probit estimates, this paper analyzes the effects of fiscal consolidation on the probability of sovereign default in the short run. Using a panel of 104 developing countries from 1980 to 2009 and controlling for various economic, fiscal and political factors, we find that fiscal adjustments in general do not significantly reduce the probability of default even if they are large. Instead, the composition of budget consolidation is decisive in reducing default risk. Expenditure based adjustments are not successful while revenue based adjustments lower the probability of default in the following year by 36 to 55 percent. This finding also holds when economic growth is low or government debt is high as well as when IMF lending is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY The paper discusses the use of fiscal policy as a tool of economic stabilization in seven OECD countries since the mid-fifties. It draws on a recent empirical study, with attached fiscal policy recommendations, made by an expert group within the OECD, in which the author was a member. The method of analysis in the paper is to compare on one hand the 'direct' impact on aggregate demand of fiscal policy changes with on the other hand the timing of the business cycle. Among the countries included in the study, the U. K. and Sweden seem to have most systematically tried fiscal policy as an instrument of economic stabilization. It seems quite clear that the policy in the U. K. has been rather unsuccessful against the background of domestic economic conditions, whereas the experiences in Sweden are considerably more promising. In other countries fiscal policy has been used at particular occasions for economic stabilization, such as in Germany and Belgium during some periods with tendencies to recessions (1958 and 1962), in the U. S. to move the economy closer to full capacity utilization (1964-65) and at several occasions in various countries as part of a policy package to avoid balance of payments crises. It does not seem that forecasting mistakes have been the main obstacle to a more efficient stabilization policy. Time lags in the decision-making procedure, as well as lack of determination and firmness in policy, seem to have been more important obstacles. Another important complication has been conflicts of goals. Sometimes the policy has been more geared to the external than to the internal economic situation. At other times when the policy has been directed to influence the development of prices, unemployment problems have arisen, particularly as the price variable usually seems to lag the business cycle of the volume components. There has also been a tendency to let the expansionary actions during recessions last too long a time, thereby giving the next boom a 'flying start'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY The paper presents a model of interest rates structure with direct implications to the saving-investment process. The capital market is divided into private and government sectors, which operate under the constraints of an investment-opportunities function and a cost of capital function. The model provides the government with a degree of freedom to differentiate the lending rate from the borrowing rate. This allows the government to conduct a capital policy aimed at achieving a certain desired level of savings without disturbing the process of capital allocation. The technical operation of the model is based on an institutional structure existing in many developing countries. It allows thereby a direct application for empirical research. The paper is concluded by an empirical testing of the interest rate structure in Israel and of the consistency of the Israeli Government capital policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper suggests a simple way of developing a continuous capital coefficient series based on potential output estimates. The use of the potential output estimates in the denominator of the coefficient eliminates, the distortions to the relationship between capital and output caused by cyclical fluctuations. With the influence of cyclical fluctuations eliminated, the secular trends of the coefficient are revealed for analysis. The series developed in this study is for the private business sector of the United States Economy in the period 1909-1959. T erborgh's study of gross capital in the private business sector serves as the basis of the capital side of the coefficient, while in the denominator, the potential gross private domestic business product is derived from K nowles' potential GNP estimates. However, it is emphasized that other studies of gross capital and potential output could be substituted for the ones used in this paper. Some alternative series of the capital coefficient, based on several methods of estimating potential gross product in the business sector, are given for the postwar period. The resulting series shows a significant decrease in the capital coefficient from 2.203 in 1909 to 1.944 in 1941 with a distinct secular decline since 1922. There is a sharp once-over decrease in the coefficient during World War II. Although there is an interruption in the secular trend in the early postwar period, with a peak of 1.799 in 1951, the overall trend of the coefficient for the 1946-1959 period is downward. The change in the coefficient is from 1.719 in 1946 to 1.620 in 1959. The rates of decrease, in compound interest terms, for the two periods, 1909-1941 and 1946-1959, are approximately the same. The rates are just short of one-half and one per cent per annum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper investigates the effect of control of corruption on the consumption of luxury goods, after controlling other relevant determinants of luxury spending. The model is empirically tested for 32 developed and emerging economies between 2004 and 2014. Using panel fixed effects, difference generalized method of moments (GMM) and instrumental variable estimation methods, and two measures of the control of corruption (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index and the World Bank's Control of Corruption Index), the results show that higher levels of control of corruption decrease luxury spending. This relationship is stronger in countries with higher levels of press freedom and information transparency. These findings offer some important implications. Governments and policymakers may develop and implement regulations that increase transparency in luxury gifting and limit corruption practices. Luxury brand companies should further enhance their due diligence obligations to minimise reputational risks in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper investigates the impact of regional political instability on the political instability of a country. Our identification strategy relies on the spatial nature of international relations. We use the characteristics of the neighbors' neighbors as the instruments for the neighbors' political instability and regional dummies to control for common regional shocks. We show that political instability in neighboring countries has a strong positive impact on a given country's political instability. The average of neighbors' population size appears to be a significant mediating factor behind this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper investigates the extent to which national economic conditions matter in the ECB's decision process. We employ various decision models to aggregate counterfactual national interest rates based on Taylor rule estimates and test which of the resulting interest paths fits best to the actual monetary policy in the euro area. As a novel feature, we introduce decision models where countries that fare economically worse than the euro area average obtain a higher weight in the decision process. Our results suggest that these models explain actual ECB policy better than GDP‐based bargaining models that have been highlighted in the previous literature. Thus, the ECB seems to have emphasized the needs of countries that face an economic crisis disproportionately highly even before the advent of the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: In the wake of the global financial crisis that resulted in many business closures and given the long‐term problem of population aging in advanced countries and poverty in low‐income countries, it has become important to investigate whether new business formation by women entrepreneurs is a path to prosperity even when countries experience low fertility rates. Existing country studies suggest that female entrepreneurship can have favorable development outcomes through the channels of employment, innovation and welfare, but this paper undertakes a holistic cross‐country analysis on the determinants of female entrepreneurship, exploring the role of fertility rates in affecting female entrepreneurial outcomes. We find that the impact of fertility rate is negative and significant in influencing entrepreneurship. But factors like greater tertiary enrollment of females and higher ratios of female to male labor force participation rates can offset the negative impact of fertility rate and in fact can make the impact positive. Additionally, greater access to informal finance makes female enrollment more effective in mitigating the negative impact of fertility rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper is motivated by growing interest in noncognitive skills and the fact that many, if not most, economic and social actions require agents to plan ahead. More specifically, we use unique data from the US, UK, and Italy to show that two major classes of social resource—personality and social capital—are significant predictors of planning capacity. We use the data to estimate frontier models that help establish three empirical facts about the ability to plan. First, planning ability depends on a rich array of social resources including networks, the freedom to participate, neighbourhood co‐operation, and trust (social capital) and personality traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Secondly, we provide evidence that some personalities are more efficient than others in using resources to help them plan. Thirdly, we develop evidence of three personality profiles, referred to as ‘over‐controlled’, ‘resilient’ and ‘under‐controlled,’ and highlight the fact that these three profiles benefit differently from various aspects of social resources capital. We discuss these findings and conclude that a wide range of economic policies designed to facilitate individual planning may need to allow for heterogeneities in social resources if they are to be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers hints for prospective contributors of the economics journal "Kyklos." It lists the type of contributions that the editors of the journal prefer. Included among these preferences are papers that analyze a topic in an original way and papers that go beyond the boundaries of prevailing economics.

Recent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political institutions may be misplaced and that business-friendly economic policies (proxied for here by the World Bank's Doing Business indicator) are the key determinant of the level of income per capita. We find that a country's Doing Business rank dominates a range of measures of legal and political institutional quality as an explanatory variable for income per capita. We also find the Doing Business rank to be a key explanatory variable for economic growth and that previous findings assigning a significant role to educational attainment are not robust to the inclusion of this new indicator in growth regressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel analysis about the capabilities of academic researchers and academic poverty. Adopting the capability approach, which Amartya Sen developed to address concerns such as poverty, inequality and development, we shift the focus of analysis and discussion around evaluating academic research and academics in the social sciences from measures of so-called 'quality', 'impact' or 'excellence' to the capabilities of academics. For us, the conceptualization and evaluation of academic research is a question about what academics have reasons to value, and about their ability to achieve valuable beings and doings. It is also about determining what might constitute academic poverty, and what academics are required to do in order to avoid that poverty. Relating our analysis to debates around universities, in particular about quasi-market pressures, we identify the possibility of basic capabilities in academic research, namely: the capabilities that are necessary to fulfill basic academic needs. Our proposition is that there is academic poverty when an academic researcher is not capable of fulfilling basic academic needs, such as: adhering to standards of coherence, robustness and rigour; searching for and disseminating the spirit of the truth. Moreover, if the academic has the capabilities to fulfill those basic academic needs and yet chooses not to do so, she renders herself in a state akin to academic poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the effects of entertainment on aggregate crime rates. I track hourly crime data to analyze the behavior of offenses in a time window around football games played by the national team, in a country were football is the most popular entertainment. I find that total offenses decrease 13 percent during highly relevant games, an effect that comes exclusively from property crime. The decrease in property crime during the game is partially compensated by an increase in non-property crime in the aftermath of these games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cites the different types of contributions preferred by the editors of the periodical "Kyklos". Papers that deal succinctly with a topical economic and/or social issue of interest to general readers; Papers that analyze a topic in an original way; Suggestion that papers dealing with specific issues for only one particular country are less desirable.

Although growing evidence indicates that political connections affect firm performance, little is known how institutional factors moderate the process. This paper investigates the effect of political connections on credit access, and the role of financial development in moderating the relationship between the two. The analysis is based on a unique dataset of manufacturing firms that covers dozens of developing and transition countries. The results show that the strength of political connections, measured by the amount of time the firm's senior managers spend with government officials, has a significant positive effect on credit access. Exploiting the cross-country dimension of the dataset, I then show that the effect of political connections is higher in countries where the banking sector is more concentrated and has higher net interest margin. Furthermore, the effect of political connections is lower in countries that have credit information sharing mechanisms. These results suggest that a competitive banking sector improves efficiency of credit allocation by reducing politically motivated lending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets forth a theory of competition between exclusive religions as an entry deterrence game, in which the incumbent may find it profitable not to accommodate but to deter the competitor's entry by precommitting to sufficient capacity expansion in the event of entry. If entry costs are high enough, deterrence is optimal and the incumbent remains a monopolist, although the entry threat distorts its effort upward. The model is then used to explain the Jews' withdrawal from proselytism in the face of Christian competition in the first century CE. We review the historical evidence on conversion to Judaism before and after the first century and argue that the demise of Jewish proselytism was due not to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE but to the apostle Paul's strategic decision, in his letter to the Galatians, that Gentiles need not convert to Judaism to become Christians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates the notion of 'crony capitalism' and advances an innovative approach to the analysis of the phenomenon in case, seen as a type of rent-seeking society. The argument leads to a pioneering attempt to elaborate an original theory of crony capitalism as a sui generis system and with that end in view it combines three complementary perspectives: microeconomics (dealing with the basic economics of rent-seeking), institutional or structural (dealing with the specific structures and configurations of institutions, policies and processes via which rent seeking gets materialized), and ideological (dealing with the ideas, rhetoric, beliefs, doctrines and other forms of legitimization and justification of the specific policies and institutions). The paper identifies significant functional differences between crony capitalism in high-income and developing countries and advances a novel interpretation of the special nature of crony capitalism by focusing on the distinctive features of its ideological component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the tax administrative burden and its effect on new firm formation. It is well recognized that entrepreneurship and new firm formation are critical factors in determining economic growth and development. New firm entry into the marketplace enhances welfare in two distinct ways: 1) by promoting innovation, productivity and economic growth and 2) by increasing competition, which lowers prices and expands output. It is also well documented that barriers to entry reduce the likelihood that new firms will enter various sectors. We argue that the burden imposed by tax codes and tax compliance constitutes a barrier to entry that has been neglected in the previous literature. We use data from the World Bank to measure the administrative burden that the complexity of tax policy imposes on new firms. Additionally, we use a measure of new firm formation - entry density. Our data cover 118 countries over a period of six years. We find that the entry rate is significantly reduced by the tax administrative burden and that this effect is unrelated to general taxes on corporate profits and is robust to the inclusion of several important control variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of the nature of the altruism inherent in blood donation and the perverse effects of financial rewards for blood giving has been recently revisited in the economic literature with limited consensus. As Titmuss () famously pointed out, providing monetary incentives to blood donors may crowd out blood supply as purely altruistic donors may feel less inclined to donate. In this paper we examine how favouring different types of incentives is related to the likelihood of donating blood by exploiting a large sample representative of the population of fifteen European countries that contains information on both donation and attitudes towards incentives. Our results show that those who favour monetary rewards for blood donation are less likely to be donors and those who favour non-monetary rewards are more likely to have donated. This is consistent with the idea that while monetary rewards may crowd out blood donation, non-monetary rewards do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of optimal currency areas states that a currency union may succeed if the participating countries have complementary industry structures. If this is not the case a currency union does not, inevitably, have to fail because market forces will induce adjustments of the industry structures that will eventually lead to a successful currency union. This optimism is, however, not warranted for the euro. The euro has now been in a crisis for more than three years and a self-correcting mechanism leading out of the crisis is not in sight. The reason is that the euro union does not suffer from unadjusted industries, but from unadjusted governments. While industries adjust under the command of the invisible hand of the market in a currency union, this is not necessarily the case for governments. The general point of this paper is that countries with incompatible governments remain inimical in a currency union. They generate externalities and crises which cannot be eliminated as well in a political union. Assume that two countries traditionally cooperate in an economic union. Their governments are financially independent. They 'go Dutch'. A currency union, such as the euro union, is different. It opens not only the option of a closer economic cooperation, but it also allows for a joint cash management so that each government has the temptation to live on the other's costs and hence to generate negative externalities on the other. The governments may be aware of this trap. They conclude a Treaty in order to prevent their mutually destructive behavior. But the Treaty turns out to be non-enforceable and therefore unable to stop the infringements by mutual externalities, this being the essence of the euro crisis. Therefore the governments should withdraw and return to an economic union without externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of globalization has forced workers (essentially white collars) to learn foreign languages and break linguistic barriers. In most cases, Europeans have chosen English as a second language. But English is not the only language that has an economic impact on international trade. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the most important foreign languages used at the workplace on wages of men and women, both at the mean and along the wage distribution, in Northern and Southern Europe ( Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Workers from both genders benefit from a premium, but there are marked differences between North European and South European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the global financial crisis, the size of the banking sector has become a hotly debated topic. To measure the size of the banking system a country's banking assets divided by the country's gross domestic product ( GDP) is commonly applied as a general yardstick. This paper shows that this yardstick does not take into account differences in financial needs. In particular, countries differ with regard to the number and size of multinational enterprises. In a cross-country empirical study, we find a statistically significant relationship between the presence of large banks and the presence of multinationals, after controlling for the size of the country. That is why we develop an additional specific yardstick for firm specific financial needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the view that theocracies are essentially a form of dictatorship and verifies whether this interpretation is empirically supported when applied to the longest lasting example of theocracy, the temporal power of the Popes. The length of its record and the many historical shocks it had to face reveal information about the incentives and constraints that characterize it. We use this information to test some of the predictions of a theory of dictatorship about the durability of, and the source of opposition to the various regimes on data about the Papacy. The results appear to support the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the impact of immigration on entrepreneurship. I find clear evidence that immigration has a significant impact on entrepreneurship. The paper makes three important contributions to the research of both immigration and entrepreneurship. First, it proposes unique empirical evidence using a cross-section analysis in which the country's level of immigrants has a significantly positive affect on its level of entrepreneurship. Second, it adds to the theoretical understanding of the mechanisms and environments that characterize positive immigration effects on entrepreneurship. I suggest that country-specific characteristics - in particular urban, open, competitive and culturally diversified (including open minded for ethnic and gender diversity) - influence significantly the positive effect of immigrants on the country's level of entrepreneurship. Furthermore, these positive effects are magnified as the flow of immigrants grows. Third, it uses for the first time in the literature a cross-section data set of 176 countries of immigrants and entrepreneurial activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replies to comments on the drawbacks in the proposal of Riyanto and Yetkiner, which is a market-based demand and supply mechanism for dissemination of pre-publication academic research papers. Proposed refinements that focus on the identity of the network members; Network members as institutions; Burden of enforcement and incentive problems to institutional members.