This paper argues that Blomberg and Hess's (Journal of International Economics 1997) finding that political variables can be used to predict exchange rate movements better than the random walk model must be seen in the context of the decade and half of previous research which failed to beat this...

We investigate the lending behavior of banks by exploiting a rich oanel dataset on the contract terms of approximately two million commercial and industrial loans granted by 580 banks between 1977-1993. Using a Markov switching panel model we demonstrate that banks change their lending standards...

This is a survey of the literature linking economics and politics. In the introduction, I explain why it is necessary to study these issues as a separate course in economics. I then proceed to analyze voting models, the political business cycle, international and foreign policy issues. The...

This paper investigates the implications of how states with initiative systems of legislation can use this more direct form of democracy to improve productive resource allocation by their goverments. We construct a simple growth model whereby we can identify this channel through which...

The prupose of this paper is to investigate whether legislators vote in two distinct blocs as suggested by the US political system and whether these voting patterns can be explained by economic variables. The paper employs a variant of the Hamilton Reime-Switching Model (1989) to uncover three...