The United Nations Goldstone Report criminalized self-defense against state-sponsored or state-perpetrated terror. We use voting on the two UN General Assembly resolutions relating to the Goldstone Report to study whether support for the Goldstone principle of criminalization of self-defense...

We study the occurrence of holdout litigation in the context of sovereign defaults. The number of creditor lawsuits against foreign governments has strongly increased over the past decades, but there is a large variation across crisis events. Why are some defaults followed by a "run to the...

I model the ocean as an array of lines set within a two-dimensional frame, and show how the Exclusive Economic Zone emerged as an equilibrium in customary international law. I find that custom codifies the efficient Nash equilibrium of enclosure for nearshore fisheries. For highly migratory and...

Using detailed firm-level transactions data for UK imports, we find that invoicing in a vehicle currency is pervasive, with more than half of transactions in our sample invoiced in neither sterling nor the exporter's currency. We then study the relationship between invoicing currency choices and...

Our friend and colleague Rüdiger Dornbusch passed away before he was able tocomplete his book based on the Munich Lectures in Economics that he gave inNovember 17, 1998, at the Center for Economic Studies of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.The lectures contain a fascinating overview of the...

While the consequences and effectiveness of IMF conditionality have long been the focus of research, the possible negative impact of IMF conditionality on countries' willingness to ask for an IMF programme - often termed "IMF stigma" - has recently received attention particularly from policy...

We use the demise of silver-based standards in the 19th century to explore price dynamics when a commodity-based money ceases to function as a global unit of account. We develop a general equilibrium model of the global economy with gold and silver money. Calibration of the model shows that...

We study the evolution of offshore renminbi trading between 2016 and 2019. The diffusion behaviour of offshore renminbi trading during this period is different from the one between 2013 and 2016. The geographical diffusion process displayed in the 2016-2019 period, in addition to the previously...

A sketch of the International Monetary Fund's 70-year history reveals an institution that has reinvented itself over time along multiple dimensions. This history is primarily consistent with a "demand driven" theory of institutional change, as the needs of its clients and the type of crisis...

We study the desirability of interventionist harmonization of legal standards across multiple, mutually interdependent jurisdictions which strive to adapt law to their local conditions as well as to synchronize it with other jurisdictions. In a setting where jurisdictions are privately informed...