The objective of the paper is to explore and give an overview of two central policy alternatives to improve the integration between the European Union and developing countries by removing barriers to trade: trade preferences and trade facilitation. After reviewing the relevant literatures and...

We argue that the literature on government size suffers from neglecting the role of governance both as a driving and a limiting factor for government spending. Cross-country evidence for a sample of 126 developed and developing countries averaging data for the period 2003-07 reveals that better...

Some countries fail to ensure that their citizens and businesses make an appropriate contribution to the financing of public tasks. But not all countries with a low tax ratio automatically fall into this cat-egory. This paper presents an approach to bridge the gap between probabilistic...

This paper develops a real options approach to the optimal sequencing of antiretroviral drug cocktails for HIV/AIDS patients in resource-poor settings. The analysis focuses on the implications of endogenous resistance mutations in the virus that reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of...

This paper discusses possible strategies for developing countries in negotiations on trade in services in the ongoing WTO Doha Development Round (DR). The liberalization of service imports (including through direct investment) will generate benefits through higher quality, lower prices, and...

Advanced OECD countries are widely held responsible to contain global carbon emissions by providing financial and technical support to developing economies, where emissions are increasing most rapidly. It is open to question, however, whether more generous official development assistance would...

In this paper we examine the influence of foreign direct investment inflows on energy intensities of developing countries empirically. We first show that a simple OLS estimation, as it is found in the literature, suggests energy intensity reductions from FDI inflows, which is consistent with the...