From the economic point of view, the problems created by the huge differences in income levels between the applying countries (see Carius, Homeyer and Baer, 2000) are even more important. This is also true for the five Central and East-European Countries (CEECs), who in the opinion of the European Council are already meeting the requirements mentioned above, and with whom formal accession negot...

This paper examines the correlates of poverty transitions and consumption per capita, using a new longitudinal data set from Bangladesh. It first examines the determinants of poverty transition categories (chronic poor, never poor, falling into poverty, moving out of poverty) as a function of household characteristics in the original survey round and shocks experienced by the household, control...

Consanguineous marriage that defines as a union between biologically related persons has a variety of known deleterious correlations with factors that affect public health within human populations. To investigate the association between the mean of inbreeding coefficient (α) and incidence of leukemia, the present ecological study on 68 countries was carried out. Statistical analysis showed that...

Japan consists of many small inhabited islands in addition to four main islands. We examine the impact of fiscal expenditure and the number of tourists on per capita taxable income in remote islands using panel data analysis. The results show that both fiscal expenditure and population size have significant positive impacts on per capita taxable income, whereas the number of tourists does not h...

Researchers often estimate average treatment effects of programs without investigating heterogeneity across units. Yet, individuals, firms, regions, or countries vary in their ability, e.g., to utilize transfers. We analyze Objective 1 Structural Funds transfers of the European Commission to regions of EU member states below a certain income level by way of a regression discontinuity design wit...

Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials’ corruption. In contrast to the “tollbooth view” of regulation, the standard chosen by a self-interested government is a ...

About half the growth in real per capita medical spending from 1960 to 1993 and two-thirds of its growth from 1983 to 1993 resulted from either the level or the growth of insurance coverage, chiefly the former. Dividing all factors determining the 1960-1993 growth in real per capita medical spending into two major categories, we find that 70 percent of this growth resulted from cost-increasing ...