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Economic sanctions: Coalitions increase the cost for the target and reduce own burden

What is the role of coalitions in enforcing sanctions? In a newly released study, researchers at IfW Kiel and DIW Berlin analyse the economic impact of jointly implementing punitive measures in the context of the 2012 Iran and 2014 Russia sanctions. They find that coalitions serve two crucial purposes -- they not only magnify the economic cost imposed on the target but also reduce domestic costs for ...

Floating population: consumption and location choices of rural migrants in China

On the relation between trade and democratization

Whether trade can achieve societal change is a contested topic and difficult to investigate. This round-up aims at summarizing recent empirical research on this topic while focusing on democracy and democratization as an important part of societal change. No robust results for change arising from trade can be found, but there exists an inverse causality, i.e., democratization leading to more trade...

What is the Right Geographic Market Definition?

What is the “right” geographic definition of relevant markets? We study how unexpected and exogenous increases in excise duties in petroleum products were passed-through to retail prices in the Athens region and examine how the degree of the pass-through varies across different geographic relevant markets. Using various definitions of the relevant geographic market, we find that the most...

Competition and VAT Pass-Through

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we study how changes in VAT rates are passed through to consumers in islands with different number of retailers. We show that pass-through increases with competition, going from 50% in monopoly to around 80%...

Brothers in Arms: The Value of Coalitions in Sanctions Regimes

This paper provides novel empirical results on the welfare impact of sanctions when countries coordinate their sanctions packages. To do so, weconduct simulations with the Caliendo and Parro (2015) CGE model of the world economy that provides changes in welfare under different hypothetical setups of sanctions coalitions. Focusing on the 2012 wave of sanctions against Iran and the 2014 sanctions...

How Shocks Affect Stock Market Participation

While there is a broad consensus in the literature that stock ownership is associated with individual characteristics, such as wealth, income, risk preferences, and financial literacy, less is known about the dynamics of stock market participation (SMP). Major fluctuations in SMP are oftentimes related to political events, economic shocks, and technological disruptions. We discuss the literature...

The Rise and Fall of Social Housing? Housing Decommodification in Long-run Comparison

The comparative study of housing decommodification lags behind classical welfare state research, while housing research itself is rich in homeownership studies but lacks comparative accounts of private and social rentals due to missing comparative data. Building on existing works and various primary sources, this study presents a new collection of up to forty-eight countries’ social housing shares ...

Government Ownership and Competition: Evidence from the European Airline Industry

This paper empirically analyses the impact of government ownership on competition in monopoly and duopoly markets. We use the European Airline Industry as a laboratory. In our empirical strategy we exploit two sources of exogenous variations that allow us to cleanly filter out the effect of government ownership on the likelihood of exit. First, we study government ownership that was triggered by a...

When Competition is not Desired: the Case of Antibiotic Prescribing

Antibiotics are effective in treating bacterial infections. However, the excessive usage of antibiotics leads to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which significantly reduces their effectiveness. Current strategies to address antibiotic resistance mainly target primary care physicians, who serve as the gatekeepers of antibiotic prescriptions in many countries. Therefore, it is...