The global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both originate in the combination of economic policies adopted by the two key economies, the US and China. Global financial markets served as a transmission belt, both during the boom as during...

This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries. We use quarterly data in the 1980.1-2005.4 period and exclude EMU countries. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant index of central bank independence with...

We assess differences that emerge in Taylor rule estimations for the Fed and the ECB before and after the start of the subprime crisis. For this purpose, we apply an explicit estimate of the equilibrium real interest rate and of potential output in order to account for variations within these...

We analyze the ECB Governing Council's voting procedures. The literature has by now discussed numerous aspects of the rotation model but does not account for many institutional aspects of the voting procedure of the GC. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension (MLE) of...