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: 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]