In the matter of financial literacy it is often supposed that more is automatically preferable to less. This paper considers to what extent this may be true generally, and specifically focuses on the case of investment forecasting skill (a significant component of an individual's financial...

Many constitutions specify procedures that allow critical decisions to be made with a different rule from day-to-day decisions. We propose a theory of constitutional rules that explains why. The theory is based on the assumption that the type of decision can be observed, but not verified. We...

The United Kingdom has twice suffered major disruption as a result of fuel panics first in September 2000 coincident with a wave of fuel protests and more recently in March 2012 following politcal warnings of possible future supply chain disruption. In each case the disruption and economic...

This paper studies a model of equilibrium unemployment in which the ecacy of scal policy increases markedly in times of crises. A sudden rise in pessimism leads households to save rather than to spend, causing a fall in output and rising unemployment But as a persistent rise in unemployment...

This paper argues that the effectiveness of fiscal policy may increase markedly during periods of low nominal interest rates and high, persistent, unemployment. An increase in government spending boosts economic activity and reduces the unemployment rate both in the present and in the future. As...

The paper examines the use of taxation as a method of improving the redistributional impact of social benefits, focusing on the case of the universal family allowance programme in Hungary.

Historical evidence has taught us that it is often the poorest and most deprived people in unequal societies who are recruited to fight in civil wars. The present contribution constructs a theoretical model of the choice between appropriation and production, where conflict is represented as...

Most philosophers and social scientists argue that the relationship between life satisfaction and its determinants is intermediated by cultural drivers (education, race, gender, religion, regional cultural background, etc.) and that (as suggested by descriptive evidence on "frustrated...

This paper tests the hypothesis that the extension of the voting franchise was caused by the threat of revolution, as suggested by Acemoglu and Robinson [Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 1167-1199, 2000]. We approximate the threat of revolution in a given country by revolutionary events...

How important are national macroeconomic indicators for people’s satisfaction with democracy? This paper empirically explores the link from macroeconomic variables to support for established democratic systems. We combine country-level data on growth, inflation, and unemployment from the OECD...