Thank you to all who have contributed to our ESDS International case studies initiative. If you would like to submit a case study for possible publication, please complete the form at Case Studies Wanted.

CASE STUDY: Teaching Economics at Nottingham Trent University, Marie Stack

As a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), Marie Stack teaches on a range of undergraduate modules, including Economics Theory, Public Issues, and International Trade. Her current research interests include; the determinants of trade, the trade effect of Regional Trade Agreements and foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe. In this case study, she describes how she uses international data from the ESDS International portfolio in her taught courses....[read more]

 

CASE STUDY: Fertility and Pensions, Giuseppe Rizzo

A large body of literature suggested that the decline of fertility observed in the last centuries may be an effect of the progressive deterioration of family ties, which reduces the expected old-age economic support from children. However, the decline of fertility reduces the profitability of pay-as-you-go pension systems, therefore the political support toward such systems. The thesis suggested a voting model that incorporates these effects in order to investigate the relationship between family ties and political support toward pension systems...[read more]

 

CASE STUDY: Investigating Macroeconomic Determinants of Happiness in Transition Countries: How Important is Government Expenditure?, Lena Malesevic Perovic and Silvia Golem

This paper combines the data from surveys about happiness and macroeconomic data and analyzes the effects of macroeconomic variables on self-reported happiness in transition countries, focusing particularly on the impact of government size in the economy. We use the international data on the reported happiness levels of thousands of individuals and find that government expenditure as a percentage of ...[read more]

 

CASE STUDY: Institution and Growth: The East Asian Development, Mahyudin Ahmad

We investigate the East Asian growth experience in the past three decades from an institutional perspective and offer additional evidence that the institution is able to explain economic performance. The East Asian countries have seen a dramatic economic growth since early 1990s and the feat was once dubbed “the East Asian Miracle” by the World Bank...[read more]

 

CASE STUDY: World Electricity Co-operation, Kwanruetai Boonyasana

This case study describes a PhD thesis carried out at the University of Leicester. This study examines whether electricity co-operation (import and export) between countries can help redress the problem of high electricity prices. The case study uses data from the International Energy Agency's World Energy Statistics from ESDS International. [read more]

CASE STUDY: Real World: Real Data: Real Stories: Teaching Econometrics with ESDS International, Jackie Carter

The project used a case study approach to bring to life the experience of the challenge faced by educators in attempting to improve the data skills of social science undergraduate and postgraduate study in the UK. Groups of teachers at several UK universities were interviewed; the interviews were written up to provide several case studies – or stories - and audio or video recordings of key issues were embedded into the stories. [read more]

CASE STUDY: Something about young people or something about elections?, Edward Fieldhouse, Mark Tranmer and Andrew Russell

In an environment of declining turnouts in elections in Western democracies, a particular concern is that non-voting appears to be concentrated among the young. As its starting point, this research observed that the overall turnout rate for 22 European countries in elections between 1999 and 2002 was 70 per cent, compared to 51 per cent for electors aged less than 25.......[read more]

CASE STUDY: Reducing the Political Cost of Europe’s Dependence on Russian Gas, Pierre Noel

The conventional wisdom, at least in foreign policy circles, posits a direct and necessary relationship between the level of ‘dependence’ of Europe on Russian gas and the existence or severity of threats to its political unity and strategic autonomy towards Russia. Europe, so goes the idea, would improve its ability to defend its collective interest vis-à-vis Russia if it reduced its reliance, absolute or relative, on Russian gas......[read more]

CASE STUDY: Assessing the Link between Financial Liberalization and Saving, Alexander E. Kentikelenis

This study focuses on the effects of financial deregulation on gross national and household savings via its impact on interest rates. In this context the experiences of the United Kingdom and Korea after 1973 will be explored. In 1973, McKinnon and Shaw made the case against financial repression and spurred a world-wide debate with important policy implications. Repressed economies were seen to suffer from a variety of problems that could be amended by liberalizing the system and resorting to the market......[read more]

CASE STUDY: Puzzles in financial development and economic growth, Ghimire Binam and Giorgioni Gianluigi

This work tests the robustness of two important puzzles regarding the relationship of financial development and economic growth documented in a number of recent papers. The first puzzle relates to the finding that banks have a positive effect upon economic growth in the long run but a negative one in the short run. The second is about the positive effect of stock markets upon economic growth irrespective of time horizons........[read more]

CASE STUDY: Home Bias in Foreign Direct Investment, Kristina Vasileva

We investigate home bias in corporate decision making in an international context. There is a strong preference for corporate managers to invest in surrounding countries and places of social and cultural familiarity. We investigate whether this tendency to invest in the familiar is also present in foreign direct investments. FDI data is on 5755 different bilateral country pairs and more than 50.000 observations for FDI inflows and outflows for the period 1981-2005. Corporate investors prefer destinations that are more familiar to them. They prefer to invest in countries near to their home country and ones that are part of the same economic union as and have a similar legal system to the one in their home country. Like investors in the equity markets, the managers who make the decisions in the corporations regarding FDI's are people influenced by their personal background and their location.......[read more]

CASE STUDY: Comparing Early Warning Systems for Banking Crises, Dilruba Karim

Despite the extensive literature on prediction of banking crises by Early Warning Systems (EWS), their practical use by policy makers is limited, even in the international financial institutions. This is a paradox since the changing nature of banking risks as more economies liberalise and develop their financial systems, as well as ongoing innovation, makes the use of EWS for informing policies aimed at preventing crises more necessary than ever. In this context, we assess the logit and signal extraction EWS for banking crises on a comprehensive common dataset......[read more]

CASE STUDY: Science knowledge and attitudes across cultures: a meta-analysis, Nick Allum, Patrick Sturgis, Dimitra Tabourazi, Ian Brunton-Smith.

The correlation between knowledge and attitudes has been the source of controversy in  research on the public understanding of science (PUS).  Although many studies, both quantitative and qualitative, have examined this issue, the results are at best diverse and at worst contradictory. In this study, we review the evidence on the relationship between public attitudes and public knowledge about science across 40 countries using a meta-analytic approach...[read more]

CASE STUDY: Low emission European energy scenarios, Mark Barrett

Many countries face all of the three following environment and energy problems: reducing the impacts of air pollution on human health and ecosystems; controlling climate change and its impacts; and securing long term energy supplies adequate for providing services to people and the economy. This research describes work that explores policy measures for addressing this trinity of problems in the European Union.[read more]

CASE STUDY: When do people feel European? European identity, EU attitudes, and questionnaire design, Robert Johns.

The legitimacy and popularity of the European Union are increasingly seen as hinging on a sense of European identity among its citizens. The Eurobarometer survey series includes a variety of established measures of European identity, asking respondents whether they ‘feel European’, are ‘proud to be European’, and ‘feel attached to Europe’...[read more].

CASE STUDY: Sources of finance for development, Joseph Besong.

There has been a shift from traditional bank lending to developing countries in the 70s to foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 90s. However, viewed as a group, one may miss the true picture as over 30% of FDI flows have been to China. Africa continues to lead in attracting foreign aid (about 30%) but aid has either not been enough or is ineffective to growth and poverty reduction. As the world looks towards 2015 when the millennium development goals are expected to be achieved, there is need to look at other sources of financing such as remittances....[read more]

CASE STUDY: Gender Equality in the Labour Market in Central and Eastern Europe: Attitudes to Women’s Work, Sylke V. Schnepf.

The analysis of economic factors usually applied for examining gender inequality in the labour market suggests that former post communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have reached similarly high standards of gender equality compared to Western European countries. This study aims at comparing attitudes to women’s work between transition and OECD countries highlighting the explanatory power of societal norms.....[read more]