A motivation for central bank independence (CBI) is that policy delegation helps politicians manage diverse coalitions. This paper develops a model of coalition formation that predicts when delegation will occur. An analysis of policy preferences survey data and CBI indicators supports the...

Followers of law, politics and business commonly relate stories of individuals who appear to predict an expected self-performance level below what they believe likely. Candidates, attorneys and firms sometimes seem to under-predict their own capacities. Insofar as individuals typically construct...

We study the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies (1975 - 2009). We find an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months of about one tenth of a standard deviation. A similar effect can neither be detected in...

We provide new evidence on the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates. We study month-to-month fluctuations in the growth rate of M1 in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies from 1975 to 2009. The evidence shows an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months...

This paper employs a multi-country delegation model of a single monetary policy and argues that a decision making mechanism based on the median voter theorem is too restrictive for capturing important aspects of monetary policy in the European Monetary Union, particularly because intensity of...

Investigating the strategic advantage of negatively interdependent preferences in action monotonic games, we derive characterizing conditions both for general action monotonic games and for the subclass of action monotonic games with spillovers. Examples demonstrate the generality of our...

The paper examines how rules and institutions as well as the monetary-fiscal coordination setup impact welfare outcomes of a reform during uncertainty shocks. We define uncertainty shocks as sudden events that create ambiguity about future course of economic policies chosen by policy makers as...

This paper employs a multi-country delegation model of a single monetary policy and argues that a decision making mechanism based on the median voter theorem is too restrictive for capturing important aspects of monetary policy in the European Monetary Union, particularly because intensity of...

This paper employs a multi-country delegation monetary policy model and argues that a decision making mechanism based on the median voter theorem where intensity of preferences cannot play a role does not capture important aspects of policy-setting in the European Monetary Union. Replacing the...

We combine two natural experiments, multiple empirical strategies and administrative data to study voters' response to marginal changes to the fine for electoral abstention in Peru. A smaller fine leads to a robust decrease in voter turnout. However, the drop in turnout caused by a full fine...