A transition finance country pilot was initiated by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in partnership with the government of Cabo Verde. The study aims to capture the challenges facing Cabo Verde following graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) to Lower Middle Income Category...

We use quanto credit default swaps to analyse the impact of a credit event in the Eurozone on the Dollar-Euro exchange rate. In light of the European debt crisis, market participants are willing to pay more for protection against a sovereign credit event if it is denominated in US Dollars rather...

We investigate the behavior of consumer confidence around national elections in the EU-15 countries during 1985:1-2007:3. Consumer confidence increases before the date of elections and falls subsequently by almost the same amount. It is able to predict the strength of the performance of the...

There appears to be a strong upward drift in policy-related economic uncertainty after 1960. We consider two classes of explanations for this rise. The first stresses growth in government spending, taxes, and regulation. A second stresses increased political polarization and its implications for...

Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation across time and countries? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an...

Do political institutions shape economic policy? I argue that this question should naturally appeal to economists. Moreover, the answer is in the affirmative, both in theory and in practice. In particular, recent theoretical work predicts systematic eects of electoral rules and political regimes...

Different beliefs about how fair social competition is and what determines income inequality, influence the redistributive policy chosen democratically in a society. But the composition of income in the first place depends on equilibrium tax policies. If a society believes that individual effort...

This paper analyzes the median voter's most preferred sequences of labor taxes in the standard neoclassical growth model. We consider an infinite horizon economy in which agents are heterogeneous with respect to both initial wealth and labor skills. We start by providing a set of sufficient...

We try to demonstrate how economists may engage in research on comparative politics, relating the size and composition of government spending to the political system. A Downsian model of electoral competition and forward-looking voting indicates that majoritarian -- as opposed to proportional --...