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The bigger the better? Evidence of the effect of government size on life satifaction around the world
(2005)Economics Working Paper SeriesWorking Paper -
Keeping a Low Profile: What Determines the Allocation of Aid by Non-Governmental Organizations?
(2008)KOF Working PapersNGOs play an important role in international development cooperation, but the allocation of NGO aid has rarely been mapped, let alone explained. Based on a representative dataset for 61 important NGOs from various OECD countries, we analyze the targeting of NGO aid across a large number of recipient countries by jointly considering major determinants of NGO aid in a multivariate regression framework. While our results show that NGOs are ...Working Paper -
Do IMF and World Bank influence voting in the UN general assembly?
(2006)KOF Working PapersUsing panel data for 188 countries over the period 1970-2002 this paper empirically analyzes the influence of the IMF and the World Bank on voting patterns in the UN General Assembly. Countries receiving adjustment programs and larger non-concessional loans from the World Bank vote more frequently in line with the average G7 country. The same is true for countries obtaining non-concessional IMF programs. Regarding voting coincidence with ...Working Paper -
Politics and IMF Conditionality
(2013)KOF Working PapersBailouts sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are famous for their conditionality: in return for continued installments of desperately needed loans, governments must comply with austere policy changes. Many have suggested, however, that politically important countries face rather weak stringency. Obstacles to testing this hypothesis include finding a measure of political importance that is not plagued by endogeneity and ...Working Paper -
Do gasoline prices converge in a unified Europe with non-harmonized tax rates?
(2005)KOF Working PapersThe paper presents univariate and panel unit root tests for gasoline and oil price convergence over the last decade. We test for the absolute versus relative version of the LOOP and estimate the speed of convergence as well as its development over time. Our results show that the absolute version of the LOOP cannot be supported. Constant price differences between countries remain, caused mainly by existing tax differences. The relative ...Working Paper -
Acting autonomously of mimicking the state and peers?
(2009)KOF Working PapersNGO aid is still widely believed to be superior to official aid (ODA). However, the incentives of NGOs to excel and target aid to the poor and deserving are increasingly disputed. We contribute to the emerging literature on the allocation of NGO aid by performing panel Tobit estimations for Swiss NGOs. The analysis offers new insights in two major regards: First, we cover the allocation of both self-financed and officially co-financed aid ...Working Paper -
Sectoral Aid Priorities: Are Donors Really Doing Their Best to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals?
(2006)KOF Working PapersWe analyze the aid portfolio of various bilateral and multilateral donors, testing whether they have prioritised aid in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In doing so, we combine sectorally disaggregated aid data with indicators reflecting the situation of recipient countries regarding the MDGs. Our results show that donors differ not only in terms of their overall generosity and the general poverty orientation of aid, but ...Working Paper -
Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence
(2008)KOF Working PapersA long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that the conclusions reached by previous studies are fairly sensitive to the ...Working Paper -
Does Membership in International Organizations Increase Governments’ Credibility? Testing the Effects of Delegating Powers
(2008)KOF Working PapersThis paper analyzes whether nation-state governments can increase their credibility by becoming members of international organizations. Credibility is an important asset because it determines the real interest rate and is expected to have an important impact on investment and growth. It is hypothesized that the degree of delegation to international organizations can improve the credibility of nation-state governments. This hypothesis is ...Working Paper