This paper employs a stylized New Keynesian DSGE model for a monetary union to analyze whether cyclical inflation differentials can be explained by cross-country differences concerning the characteristics of financial markets. Our results suggest that empirically plausible degrees of...

We analyze the link between banking sector quality and sovereign risk in the whole European Union over 1999–2014. We employ four different indicators of sovereign risk (including market- and opinion-based assessments), a rich set of theoretically and empirically motivated banking sector...

This paper applies long-memory techniques (both parametric and semi-parametric) to examine whether Brexit has led to any significant changes in the degree of persistence of the FTSE 100 Implied Volatility Index (IVI) and of the British pound’s implied volatilities (IVs) vis-à-vis the main...

This paper examines the spillover effects of sovereign rating news on European financial markets during the period 2007-2010. Our main finding is that sovereign rating downgrades have statistically and economically significant spillover effects both across countries and financial markets. The...

In the last two decades of the XIX century Italy became an industrial country. Historians maintain that this process was affected by the action of some interest groups that pursued both state protection from competition and specific public expenditure programs. Starting from the economic...

Using a model of repeated agency, we explain previously unexplained features of the real-world lobbying industry. Lobbying is divided between direct representation by special interests to policymakers, and indirect representation where special interests employ professional intermediaries called...

We describe the evolution of the power struggle in Greece among key economic and political stakeholders, who have tried, via strategic positioning and rent-seeking activities, to influence economic policy outcomes during the postwar decades. We split the postwar decades in three periods: the...

Interest groups are introduced in a spatial model of electoral competition between two political parties. We show that, by coordinating voting behavior, these interest groups increase the winning set, which is defined as the set of policy platforms for the challenger that will defeat the...

Previous research has shown that if countries "merge", (i.e. move to centralized policy choices) the effect is to reduce lobbying. However empirical evidence suggests that this is not always the case. This paper attempts to explain the empirical evidence in a two-jurisdiction political economy...

We study regulation of the auditing profession in a model where audit quality is unobservable and enforcing regulation is costly. The optimal audit standard falls short of the first-best audit quality, and is increasing in the riskiness of firms and in the amount of funding they seek. The model...