While several cross-sectional studies (La Porta et. al. 2002, Norton 2002) examine institutional and cultural determinants of economic freedom, changes in economic freedom remain unexamined. I construct a measure of median voter preferences and find changes in voter preferences for economic...

Corruption scandals seem to abound in countries that have recently undergone reform. Despite the proliferation of stories in the news media, no one has examined whether reform—be it democratization or economic liberalization or both—actually causes an increase in corruption. Theory provides...

The paper empirically investigates whether people's attitude towards the progress in political transformation in Eastern Europe are influenced by economic factors. Thereby it addresses the question of independence between economic and political system. Using a large panel data set, containing...

Digits in statistical data produced by natural or social processes are often distributed in a manner described by “Benford’s law”. Recently, a test against this distribution was used to identify fraudulent accounting data. This test is based on the supposition that real data follow the...

Standard official measures of economic well-being are based on money income. The general consensus is that such measures are seriously flawed because they ignore several crucial determinants of well-being. We examine two such determinants-household wealth and public consumption-in the context of...

The tax office wins most cases in Japan. We think about why this might be. We find that although judges who rule in favor of the taxpayer do not suffer in their future careers, if the loser-- whether governemnt or taxpayer--appeals and wins, the reversed judge's career does take a turn for the...

Regarding the trade-off between the depth and the duration of recessions, there exists a mounting empirical evidence of the idiosyncratic and non-synchronized behavior of the business cycle over time within and across countries. In this paper, I propose a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium...

This paper is based on the governance chapter contribution to the 2003/04 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). Building from the 2002/03 contribution to the GCR, it argues that governance continues to be at a crossroad, its underperformance being evident worldwide in most regions and across many...

(This abstract and the paper are in Turkish.) Ekonomik krizler; herhangi bir mal, hizmet, uretim faktoru veya doviz piyasasindaki fiyat ve/veya miktarlarda, kabul edilebilir bir degisme sinirinin otesinde gerceklesen siddetli dalgalanmalar olarak tanimlanabilir. Soz konusu krizlerin ortaya...