We employ a wavelet approach and conduct a time-frequency analysis of dynamic correlations between pairs of key traded assets (gold, oil, and stocks) covering the period from 1987 to 2012. The analysis is performed on both intra-day and daily data. We show that heterogeneity in correlations...

This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the...

Different investor classes are endowed with different rights, and conflicting interests among them can make protections afforded to one party detrimental to another. Indeed, we find that investor protection laws have sizeable "cross" effects on foreign portfolio investment and the direction of...

The existing literature has shown that special interest groups can have both growth enhancing and retarding effects on an economy. In either case it is always assumed that the nature of the special interest groups remains constant over time. The hypothesis of this paper is that a dynamic...

Economists usually think that rational voters have little incentives to acquire costly information. We present a theoretical model to show that, in contrast to this widely held belief, rational voters acquire considerable amounts of information if media technology is available because then they...

This paper reconsiders the division of the literature on electoral competition into models with forward-looking voters and those with backward-looking voters by combining ideas from both strands of the literature. As long as there is no uncertainty about voters’ policy preferences and parties...