The possibility that the euro area might break up was being raised even before the single currency existed. These scenarios were then lent new life five or six years on, when appreciation of the euro and problems of slow growth in various member states led politicians to blame the European...

This paper investigates the determinants of financial risk-taking in a panel containing the asset holdings of Swedish twins. We measure the impact of a broad set of demographic, financial, and portfolio characteristics, and use yearly twin pair fixed effects to control for genes and shared...

This paper constructs an index of financial sophistication that, in comprehensive data on Swedish households, best explains a set of three investment mistakes: underdiversification, risky share inertia, and the tendency to sell winning stocks and hold losing stocks (the disposition effect). The...

This paper investigates the efficiency of household investment decisions in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth and income of the entire population of Sweden. The analysis focuses on two main sources of inefficiency in the financial portfolio: underdiversification of risky...

This paper investigates the dynamics of individual portfolios in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth of all households in Sweden. Between 1999 and 2002, we observe little aggregate rebalancing in the financial portfolio of participants. These patterns conceal strong...

We ask whether Poland is at risk of the boom-bust problem that has afflicted economies around the time of euro adoption. Our answer, inevitably, is mixed. On the one hand the fact that Poland is an outlier, credit-growth wise, accentuates the danger of a boom if one believes in mean reversion....

We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing anti-system parties in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy. What mattered...

Using newly assembled data on foreign exchange market intervention, we construct a daily index of exchange market pressure during the 1992-3 crisis in the European Monetary System, allowing us to pinpoint when and where the crisis was most severe. Our analysis focuses on a neglected factor in...

In the UK's 2016 referendum on EU membership, young voters were more likely than their elders to vote Remain. Applying new methods to a half century of data, we show that this pattern reflects both ageing and cohort effects. Although voters become more Eurosceptical as they age, recent cohorts...

This paper reconsiders the 1992-3 crisis in the European Monetary System in light of its emerging market successors. That episode was a predecessor of the Mexican and Asian crises in the sense that both capital movements and domestic financial fragility placed important roles. The output effects...