In this paper, we study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in estimated panel VAR models for 92 countries. The large cross section of countries allows us to shed light on the heterogeneity of the responses of stock markets and NO2 emissions as high-frequency measures of economic activity. We...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

Over 10 years ago, Feld and Voigt (2003) introduced the first indicator for objectively meas-uring the actual independence of the judiciary and demonstrated its utility in a large cross-section of countries. The indicator has been widely used, but also criticized. This paper pre-sents more...

It is argued that an independent judiciary is a necessary condition for both individual liberty and economic prosperity. After having surveyed the literature dealing with how to arrange for an independent judiciary, the authors derive some additional policy implications by drawing on two...

This paper uses panel data for 116 countries over the period 1995-2016 to investigate the heterogeneity of the debt-growth nexus across countries and the factors underlying it. In the first step, the grouped fixed effects (GFE) estimator proposed by Bonhomme and Manresa (2015) is used to...

(Un-)gleichheit und Gerechtigkeit waren schon immer Kernbestandteil eines jeden politischen Konzeptes, welches das Wohl der Menschen in den Mittelpunkt rückte. Die Idee der Gleichheit ist so alt wie die der Demokratie selbst und neben instrumentellen Gründen, aus denen man (Un-)gleichheit...

Global efforts towards mitigating climate change gain momentum; reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and aiming for zero emissions, or carbon neutrality, is the main goal. Economic factors are main determinants of CO2 emissions coming from production and energy consumption. This paper aims to...

Judicial independence is not only a necessary condition for the impartiality of judges, it can also endanger it: judges that are independent could have incentives to remain uninformed, become lazy or even corrupt. It is therefore often argued that judicial independence and judicial...

It is argued that an independent judiciary is a necessary condition for both individual liberty and economic prosperity. After having surveyed the literature dealing with how to arrange for an independent judiciary, the authors derive some additional policy implications by drawing on two...

It has been argued that procedural formalism undermines economic efficiency by fostering rent-seeking and corruption. We challenge this view by arguing that a number of judicial procedures foster economic growth by increasing the predictability of court decisions, which leads to more...