Most empirical studies found that monetary policy has a significant effect on house prices while stock markets remain unaffected by interest rate shocks. In this paper we conduct a more detailed analysis by studying various sub-segments of the real estate market. Em-ploying a new dataset for...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members in parliament. Unions have not been successful in increasing their monopoly power during the last decades in the US. Similarly, a recent study for Germany comes to the result that union members in the "Bundestag" cannot be seen as the...

Modern monetary economists argue that institutional aspects such as central bank independence and central bank conservatism play an important role for the performance of an economy. In order to be able to compare the effects of different institutions it is necessary to measure both central bank...