Using an improved definition and indicator of growth accelerations, we examine whether political regimes, regime changes, and economic reform are related to growth accelerations. Our results show that economic growth accelerations are preceded by economic reforms. Furthermore, we find that...

Soon, euro area membership could more than double, with the vast majority of accession countries being quite different in economic terms compared with current members. Under the current decision-making system, this can lead to high decisionmaking costs and there is a risk that monetary policy...

This paper critically reviews the debate on CRAs and, in the light thereof, analyses the European regulatory approach to CRAs, thereby combining insights from economics and law. We first provide some basic background on the function of CRAs. Thereafter, we focus on the two main tasks for which...

This paper examines which economic, fiscal, external, financial, and institutional characteristics of countries affect the likelihood that they adopt inflation targeting as their monetary policy strategy. We estimate a panel binary response transition model for 60 countries and two subsamples...

Following Eijffinger and Geraats (2006), we construct an index of transparency of banking supervisors that takes political, economic, procedural, policy and operational transparency into account. Based on a survey, we construct the index for 24 banking supervisors. There are large differences...

The impact of the global financial crisis varies across countries. We examine whether cross-country differences in output loss and speed of recovery are affected by differences in labor market flexibility. By employing cross-country regressions and including control variables like trade and...

This paper critically reviews the debate on CRAs and, in the light thereof, analyses the European regulatory approach to CRAs, thereby combining insights from economics and law. We first provide some basic background on the function of CRAs. Thereafter, we focus on the two main tasks for which...

Wordscores uses word frequencies to extract information from texts with known policy positions. Wordscores uses this information to estimate the unknown policy positions of so - called virgin texts. We apply Wordscores to the ECB President's introductory statements following Governing Council...