We assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy using data on five inflation targeting countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). We find that in all countries the voting records, namely the difference...

An important question in development studies is how abundance of natural resources affects long-term economic growth. No consensus answer, however, has yet emerged, with approximately 40% of empirical papers finding a negative effect, 40% finding no effect, and 20% finding a positive effect....

We examine how the transparency of the European Central Bank´s monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the European Union have in this institution. We use nearly half a million individual responses from the European Commission´s Eurobarometer survey from 2000-2011 and...

We examine how unconventional monetary policy of the European Central Bank influences macroeconomic stability in Central and Eastern European economies. We estimate various panel vector autoregressions using monthly data from 2008-2014. Using the shadow policy rate and central bank assets as...

We examine whether there is contagion from the U.S. stock market to six Central and Eastern European stock markets. We use a novel measure of contagion that examines whether volatility shocks in the U.S. stock market coupled with negative returns are followed by higher co-exceedance between U.S....

We propose a novel way to measure the rule of law intensity of exports at the goods level based on nearly 100 million disaggregated bilateral trade flows around the globe. We categorise goods into three groups: fragmented, primary and other. The theoretical literature on holdup problems...

We examine the causal effect of natural resource discoveries on income inequality using the synthetic control method on data from 1947 to 2009. We focus on the natural discoveries in Denmark, Netherlands and Norway in the 1960-1970s and use top 1% and top 10% income share as the measure of...

Using a global sample, this paper investigates the determinants of wealth inequality capturing various economic, financial, political, institutional, and geographical indicators. Using instrumental variable Bayesian model averaging, it reveals that only a handful of indicators robustly matter...

We examine the effect of natural resource abundance on economic performance during the 1996-2011 period in the 15 independent countries that formerly comprised the Soviet Union. These countries were a largely homogeneous group with respect to institutional development, liberalization and...

We examine the determinants of financial development using our global sample and employing a rich set of measures of financial development that assess the degree of depth, access, stability and efficiency of financial intermediaries. We use Bayesian model averaging to test competing theories...