We derive counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the period 1999 to 2012 to approximate the interest rates countries would have implemented had they still been able to conduct independent monetary policy. We find that prior to the financial crisis the...

This paper examines the impact of oil revenues on the Iranian economy over the past hundred years, spanning the period 1908-2010. It is shown that although oil has been produced in Iran over a very long period, its importance in the Iranian economy was relatively small up until the early 1960s....

Multinational institutions face an important trade-off when hiring personnel. On the one hand, hiring decisions are based, as in most organizations, on a candidate's professional qualifications. On the other hand, multinational institutions often aim for broad national representation. Reviewing...

Within the fundamental determinants of cross-country income inequality, ‘humanly devised' political institutions represent a hallmark factor that societies can influence, as opposed to, for example, geography. Focusing on the portion of inequality explainable by differences in political...

We present an accessible narrative of the Turkish economy since its great 2001 crisis. We broadly survey economic developments and pay particular attention to monetary policy. The data suggests that the Central Bank of Turkey was a strong inflation targeter early in this period but began to pay...

No. And not only for the reason you think. In a world with multiple inefficiencies the single policy tool the central bank has control over will not undo all inefficiencies; this is well understood. We argue that the world is better characterized by multiple inefficiencies and multiple policy...

This study shows that the relative size of the youth bulge matters for how corruption affects the internal stability of a political system. We argue that corruption cannot buy political stability (e.g., the greasing hypothesis) in countries with a relatively large youth population. Using panel...

We estimate the effect of electorally induced policy uncertainty on investment in the manufacturing sector. Because state governors exercise considerable influence over legislation and considerable discretion over regulation and permitting, and because the policies relevant to business...

The theoretical literature on the economics of fiscal federalism has identified several potential effects of government decentralization on economic growth. Much of the traditional literature focuses on the efficiency aspects of a decentralized provision of public services. However,...

Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan we argue that the growing political dissatisfaction in industrialized countries is rooted in the asymmetric pattern in monetary policies since the 1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the...