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The impact of international organizations on the environment
(2006)KOF Working PapersWhen analyzing the impact of international organizations on the environment, two main issues arise. First, we have to quantify the participation of the organizations on countries they deal with. Second, the environmental impact of this involvement has to be measured. This paper attempts to do this. We employ panel data to empirically analyze whether and to what extent the presence of IMF, World Bank, regional Multilateral Development ...Working Paper -
Power to the People? The Impact of Decentralization on Governance
(2006)KOF Working PapersThe paper analyzes the impact of decentralization on governance employing four indicators of governance and five measures of decentralization. Depending on data availability, crosssections for a maximum of 129 countries are estimated. Results for a panel of about 70 countries over the period 1984-2001 are also presented. The results show that decentralization – measured as the share of sub-national employment, revenues or, respectively, ...Working Paper -
Cross-Country Determinants of Life Satisfaction: Exploring Different Determinants across Groups in Society
(2006)KOF Working PapersThis paper explores a wide range of cross-country determinants of life satisfaction exploiting a database of 90,000 observations in 70 countries. We distinguish four groups of aggregate variables as potential determinants of satisfaction: political, economic, institutional, and human development and culture. We use ordered probit to investigate the importance of these variables on individual life satisfaction and test the robustness of ...Working Paper -
Student Flows and Migration: An Empirical Analysis
(2006)KOF Working PapersUsing panel data for 78 countries of origin we examine the impact of student flows to the United States on subsequent migration there over the period 1971-2001. What we find is that the stock of foreign students is an important predictor of subsequent migration. This holds true whether or not the lagged endogenous variable is included. The relationship is robust to the inclusion of time and country dummies, and remains when we account for ...Working Paper -
Does US Aid Buy UN General Assembly Votes? A Disaggregated Analysis
(2006)KOF Working PapersUsing panel data for 143 countries over the period 1973-2002, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of US aid on voting patterns in the UN General Assembly. We use disaggregated aid data to account for the fact that various forms of aid may differ in their ability to induce political support by recipients. We obtain strong evidence that US aid buys voting compliance in the Assembly. More specifically, our results suggest that ...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 -
Has Globalisation Increased Inequality?
(2006)KOF Working PapersThere has been no shortage of theories which purport to explain why globalisation may have, adverse, insignificant or even beneficial effects on income and earnings inequality. Surprisingly, the empirical realities remain an almost complete mystery. In this paper we use data on industrial wage inequality, household income inequality as well as measures of the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation to examine this ...Working Paper -
Does Aid for Education Educate Children? Evidence from Panel Data
(2006)KOF Working PapersThis paper empirically analyzes the impact of aid on education for about 100 countries over the period 1970-2005. We estimate a system of equations to test whether and to what extent the impact of sector-specific aid on educational attainment depends on (i) the extent to which aid adds to overall educational expenditure of the recipient government, (ii) the strength of the link between government expenditure and education, (iii) the quality ...Working Paper -
Corruption and the Shadow Economy: An Empirical Analysis
(2006)KOF Working PapersThis paper analyzes the influence of the shadow economy on corruption and vice versa. We hypothesize that corruption and shadow economy are substitutes in high income countries while they are complements in low income countries. The hypotheses are tested for a crosssection of 120 countries and a panel of 70 countries for the period 1994-2002. Our results show that the shadow economy reduces corruption in high income countries, but increases ...Working Paper -
Does membership on the UN security council influence IMF decisions?
(2006)KOF Working PapersWe investigate whether temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, using panel data for 191 countries over the period 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary UN Security Council membership and participation in IMF programs, even after accounting for economic and political factors, as well as regional and country effects, and duration dependence. There ...Working Paper