infonet-economy

This paper studies the relationship between sovereign ratings and corruption indicators. The paper first shows a strong correlation between ratings issued by the three main rating agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch) and three commonly used corruption indicators. This correlation is robust to controlling for the fact that corruption is also correlated with level of…

China's unique economic system poses increasing challenges to the world trading system and attracts growing academic and policy debates. WTO members have frequently resorted to antidumping measures in dealing with price distortions caused by Chinese government influence in the economy. The Appellate Body's decision in the recent EU – Biodiesel dispute starts to remove the flexibility…

This article investigates the impact of trade agreements on bilateral trade flows of manufactured goods. Compared to other studies, it enriches the analysis by decomposing gross trade flows into their value added components, and by considering the direction of trade flows and the content of trade agreements. The analysis reveals a clear pattern in the effects of economic integration…

Participation in global value chains (GVCs) is a key element in the industrialization strategies of many developing nations. Many studies look at the determinants of GVC participation but most focus on do- mestic regulatory environments, the cost of doing business, and trade policy. This paper investigates the possibility that services also mat- ter by empirically testing for a link…

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long argued that certain decision rights carry not only instrumental value but may also be valuable for their own The ideas of autonomy, freedom, and liberty derive their intuitive appeal - partly - from an assumed positive intrinsic value of decision rights. Providing evidence for the existence of this intrinsic value and…

In this paper we conduct a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which Moore and Repullo’s subgame perfect implementation mechanism induces truth-telling, both in a setting with perfect information and in a setting where buyers and sellers face a small amount of uncertainty regarding the good’s value. We find that Moore–Repullo mechanisms fail to implement truth-telling in a…

Many researchers seek factors that predict the cross-section of stock returns. The standard methodology sorts stocks according to their factor scores into quantiles and forms a corresponding long-short portfolio. Such a course of action ignores any information on the covariance matrix of stock returns. Historically, it has been difficult to estimate the covariance matrix for a large…