Populism at the country level is at an all-time high, with more than 25% of nations currently governed by populists. How do economies perform under populist leaders? We build a new cross-country database identifying 50 populist presidents and prime ministers 1900-2018. We find that the economic...

Germany is world champion in exporting capital ("Exportweltmeister"). No other country invests larger amounts of savings outside its borders. However, Germany plays in the third division when it comes to investment performance, as we show in this paper. We study the returns on German foreign...

In the past decade, Germany has been the world champion in exporting capital (“Exportweltmeister”). No other country invested larger amounts of savings outside its borders. However, we find that Germany plays in the third division when it comes to investment performance. To show this, we...

Sovereign defaults are bad news for investors and debtor countries, in particular if a default becomes messy and protracted. Why are some debt crises resolved quickly, in a matter of months, while others take many years to settle? This paper studies the duration of sovereign debt crises based on...

How will sovereign debt markets evolve in the 21st century? We survey how the literature has responded to the eurozone debt crisis, placing "lessons learned" in historical perspective. The crisis featured: (i) the return of debt problems to advanced economies; (ii) a bank-sovereign "doom-loop"...

This paper presents the “Ukraine Support Tracker”, which lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. This third version covers government commitments between January 24 and May 10, 2022. We now track support by 37...

This paper introduces the “Ukraine Support Tracker”, which lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. We measure support from Western governments, namely by G7 and European Union member countries. Due to our focus...

This paper presents the “Ukraine Support Tracker”, which lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. This fourth version covers government commitments made between January 24 and June 7, 2022 and has a new detailed...

This paper presents the “Ukraine Support Tracker”, which lists and quantifies military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. This second version covers the period January 24 until April 23, 2022. We measure support from Western governments,...

Africa’s sovereign debt markets are not well understood, partly due to a lack of data. This paper introduces the Africa Debt Database (ADD), the most granular and comprehensive dataset on external borrowing by African governments thus far. Our project moves beyond existing aggregate datasets...