This paper examines the policy rate recommendations of the Bank of Canada's Governing Council (GC) and the C.D. Howe Institute's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) since 2003. We find, first, that differences in the median recommendations between the MPC and the GC are persistent but small (i.e., 25...

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) are shadowed by professionals and academic economists who provide a separate policy rate recommendation in advance of the central bank's announcement. We explore differences between shadow and actual committee decisions based on an...

The statement institutions matter has become commonplace. A precondition for it to be supported by empirical evidence, is, however, that institutions are measurable. Glaeser et al. (2004) attacks many studies claiming to prove the relevance of institutions for economic development as being based...

I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general...

Municipal boundary reform (municipal amalgamation) has been done in many countries in recent years as the result of a push to enlarge the size and coverage of local government units, which in turn is driven mainly by the prospect of economies of scale. However, in a notable body of previous...

We estimate the impact of fiscal decentralization on different indicators of pollution for more than 80 countries from 1970 to 2000. Our cross country estimates show that fiscal decentralization increases pollution. However, higher quality of institutions can limit the destructive environmental...

This paper uses survival analysis to examine the time taken to carry out municipality amalgamation in Japan in terms of both forming the amalgamation committee and completing amalgamation. The results show that municipalities that depend on local allocation tax grants as a revenue source, those...

Regional cultural identity increases trust and facilitates interaction between native citizens ('social capital'). At the same time, it also affects non-native's migration decisions and their utility as it excludes non-native mobile workers from economic interaction within the region. Policies...

This paper investigates whether the socioeconomic status of the head of government helps explain fiscal performance. Applying sociological research that attributes differences in people's ways of thinking and acting to their relative standing within society, we test whether the social status of...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2018. The survey covers various topics, including: 1) attitudes towards asylum seekers; 2) migrating workers in...