Empirical tests of the theories on the relationship between political competition and economic performance generate a puzzle: data tend to support the theory at the lower levels of government, but not in panels of countries. We argue that the larger set of policy instruments reduces the tax...

This paper examines whether policymakers, economists at the Israeli Finance Ministry, act in their personal pension decisions in accordance with the rational behaviour assumptions underlying the pension policies they advance. We find that while economists' decisions regarding three other...

Several developing economies witnessed a large number of systemic financial and currency crises since the 1980s which resulted in severe economic, social, and political problems. The devastating impact of the 1982 and 1994-95 Mexican crises, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 Russian...

This paper proposes a macro-prudential financial soundness analysis that can be used by most developing and transformation countries with or without crisis experience as well as by developed countries with limited data. The objective is to detect economic and financial sector vulnerability,...