There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country's prosperity. The paper focuses on political events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy's financial...

This paper analyses the link between economic fundamentals and exchange rates by investigating the importance of real-time data. We find that such economic news in the United States, Germany and the euro area have indeed been a driving force behind daily US dollar - euro/DEM exchange rate...

The paper analyses the trade-off between exchange rate flexibility and monetary policy autonomy. It tests empirically the "Possible Duality" hypothesis, i.e. whether countries with more flexible currency regimes are indeed able to exert more monetary policy autonomy than those with less flexible...