De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...

This paper investigates in a consistent semi-structural empirical framework three current issues of monetary policy in the euro area. First, regarding policy transmission we offer a three-stage procedure to combine the efficient estimation of economic structure prior to EMU with current ECB...

European Monetary Union will come into existence in 1999. This raises questions related to the monetary policy targets that will be adopted by the European Central Bank (ECB). For both likely candidates, targeting a money aggregate or an inflation target, the existence of a stable money demand...

In this paper, we examine the reaction of stock market returns and volatility in a diverse group of six emerging markets to a set of IMF events. In particular, we test within a panel framework whether there was an “investor panic” causing a significant drop in stock market returns on the...

We estimate monetary policy reaction functions for the Bundesbank (1979:4-1998:12) and the European Central Bank (1999:1-2003:7). The Bundesbank regime can be characterised, both before and after German reunification, by an inflation weight of 1.2 and an output weight of 0.4. The estimates for...