Gernot Pehnelt

Few policy issues in Brussels and Washington DC are met with such a compact unity across political boundaries as the idea of deepened transatlantic economic integration. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the support for transatlantic economic co-operation remains strong. The election of Barack Obama as the new president of the United States has added new political appeal to the transatlantic agenda. Yet post cold-war initiatives to deepen...

During the last two decades, the world has experienced a remarkable process of disinflation, with average inflation rates in industrialized countries falling by 10 percentage points and an even sharper decline of the mean rate of inflation in developing countries. Parallel to the decline in inflation rates, a tremendous increase in economic integration – often referred to as globalisation – has been taking place. In this paper, we analyse the effects of...

In March, 2007, the Treaty of Rome celebrates its 50th anniversary. The chief lesson from this remarkable period of European cooperation is the contribution to growth and prosperity from economic integration. The common commercial policy that emerged from this treaty has had a significant impact on European economic development. Equally important, regional liberalisation in Europe spurred multilateral trade liberalisation under the auspices of the GATT and the...

In this paper we empirically discuss the question whether or not debt relief in the past fifteen years has been economically rational. Analysing the determinants of debt relief our results suggest that governance quality did not play a role in the decision of creditor countries to forgive debt in the 1990s. Furthermore, even the actual debt burden of highly indebted poor countries had not been crucial for the decision whether or not debt forgiveness was granted....