This study examines how the politics of coalition government formation affect foreign exchange markets in Western European parliamentary democracies. Existing studies suggest that ex ante uncertainty associated with formation of coalition governments increases exchange rate volatility. We...

Survival data often include an “immune” or cured fraction of units that will never experience an event and conversely, an “at risk” fraction that can fail or die. It is also plausible that spatial clustering (i.e., spatial autocorrelation) in latent or unmeasured risk factors among...

A growing body of research suggests that democracy promotes trade liberalization in developing countries. We argue that democracy in developing countries generates a "skill bias" in trade policy where democratic incumbents have incentives to increase tariffs on high skilled goods but reduce...

What explains the variation in trade policy among democracies in developing countries? Why have some liberalized trade more than others? We analyze the impact of political particularism – defined as the degree of party discipline and the incentives for politicians to cultivate a personal vote...

The importance of the judiciary in consolidating and sustaining a robust democracy and, an attractive business environment has led scholars to study the conditions which allow judiciaries to function with genuine or de facto independence. One of the most influential theories in the current...

This study examines how coalition governments affect the size of government, measured by total central government expenditure as a share of GDP. Existing studies suggest that multiparty governments spend more because they have a larger number of parties, greater ideological fragmentation, and...

Existing literature on cross-national variation in violence has paid little attention to the transnational transmission of crime. One such channel are the forced returns of migrants with a criminal record in their countries of temporary residence. Responding to this research gap, we study the...

The relationship between democracy and globalisation has been the focus of substantial policy and academic debate. Some argue that democracy and globalisation go hand in hand suggesting that unrestricted international transactions leads to increased political accountability and transparency....

Much ink has been spilled over the connections between capital account liberalization and growth. One reason that previous studies have been inconclusive, we show, is their failure to account for the impact of crises on growth and for the capacity of controls to limit those disruptive output...