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The banking sector and the Swiss financial account during the financial and European debt crises

The US financial crisis and the later eurozone crisis have substantially impacted capital flows into and out of financial centers like Switzerland. We focus on the pattern of capital flows involving the Swiss banking industry. We first rely on balance-of-payment statistics and show that net banking inflows rose during the acute phases of the crises, albeit with a contrasting pattern…

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/ 29/05/2017

The effect of corporate taxes on investment: evidence from the Colombian firms

The paper assesses the role of taxes on investment in Colombian firms. The analysis is carried out at the firm level for the period 2003-2014. During this period, the national government set five different tax reforms, including changes in the statutory tax rates, tax credits and incentives for corporate investment. The effect of corporate taxation on investment is estimated by first…

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/ 29/05/2017

Follow-the-leader?: measuring the internationalisation of law

Expressive law is said to induce compliance with stated principles without a price on non-compliance. We empirically assess this proposition, by attempting to dis-entangle the impacts of a legal change (a 5p charge on use of plastic bags), on individual choices. We do so by measuring both behaviours and attitudes across the first two months of the legal change, and by comparing the…

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/ 10/03/2017

Weather and income : effect on household saving and well-being in South Africa

In countries where rain-fed agriculture constitutes a significant portion of household livelihood, increased weather variability represents a source of vulnerability to stable consumption, food security and household well-being. Weather induced income changes affect household consumption and saving decisions. We evaluate saving and consumption responses to weather variation in South…

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/ 10/03/2017

The centralization-decentralization issue

The make-up of the EU institutions, and their evolution, should explicitly be based on widely accepted federalism principles. This paper applies federalism principles to a few crucial questions, mainly fiscal policy, fiscal discipline and structural reforms, using where possible lessons from existing federations. After introducing the topic, Section 2 briefly reviews the key message…

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/ 24/02/2017

Minimum wages and firm employment: evidence from China

This paper studies how minimum wage policies affect firm employment in China using a unique county level minimum wage data set matched to disaggregated firm survey data. We investigate both the effect of imposing a minimum wage, and the effect of the policies that tightened enforcement in 2004. We find that the average effect of minimum wage changes is modest and positive, and that…

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English / 24/02/2017

On the roles of different foreign currencies in European bank lending

We draw on a new data set on the use of Swiss francs and other currencies by European banks to assess the patterns of foreign currency bank lending. We show that the patterns differ sharply across foreign currencies. The Swiss franc is used predominantly for lending to residents, especially households. It is sensitive to the interest rate differential, exchange rate developments,…

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English / 24/02/2017

The role of education in preventing and combating youth unemployment

Youth unemployment and disengagement from both education and work are negatively associated with levels of completed education and skill proficiency. Recent research highlights the importance of focusing on the quality of education and improving actual learning outcomes for all. Empirical findings show the central importance of preventive strategies targeted towards disadvantaged…

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/ 23/02/2017

Global value chains in low and middle income countries

Global Value Chains (GVCs) can provide new means for developing economies to industrialise. To fully seize these opportunities, it is necessary to comprehensively measure both the intensity and type of countries' GVC integration patterns to better understand the relationship between GVCs and development. In this paper, we apply the new R package decompr to recent OECD input-output…

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/ 21/02/2017

Towards an Integrated Database of International Economic Law (IDIEL) disputes for text-as-data analysis

This paper introduces an infrastructure for the analysis of legal metadata and textual data on international investment and trade disputes. The developed database architecture consists of three main components: (1) a WebCrawler of two key web sites for international economic law dispute information; (2) a document analyzer to transform PDFs into text files, identifying structure and…

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/ 21/02/2017

The supplier network of exporters: connecting the dots

Even in export-oriented industries, only a handful of firms ship their goods abroad and these firms are systematically different from their purely domestic counterparts. The current picture does not, however, encompass the many firms that export via trade intermediaries or supply exporters with intermediate inputs. This paper uses a new and unique dataset of yearly transactions…

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/ 21/02/2017

Does the nature of regional trade agreements matter in promoting trade?

Globalization's 'second unbundling' has drastically altered the nature of international trade giving rise to what might be referred to as the trade-investment-service nexus. Today's RTAs are qualitatively different than those signed two decades ago, since they cover disciplines that go beyond preferential market access. This paper investigates whether the nature of RTAs matters when…

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/ 21/02/2017

Issues and tensions in public procurement of 'green innovation': a cross-country study

Public procurement for green innovation refers to tailoring public procurement policies in such a way as to promote green innovation within the wider economy. This study considers the nature of these policies, their legal limits, best practices, and how they have been implemented across a sample of four different OECD countries. The study begins with a general consideration of public…

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/ 21/02/2017

The legitimate regulatory distinction: challenging the boundary between interpretation and law-making in the appellate body

This paper focuses on the nature of the Appellate Body's interpretative method in arriving at its decision to read-in that Article 2.1 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) will not prohibit a detrimental impact on competitive opportunities for imports in cases where such detrimental impact stems exclusively from a legitimate regulatory distinction.…

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/ 21/02/2017

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