Nowadays, it is widely believed that greater disclosure and clarity over policy may lead to greater predictability of central bank actions. We examine whether communication by the European Central Bank (ECB) adds information compared to the information provided by a Taylor rule model in which...

This paper uses a new data set on the term in office of central bank governors in 137 countries covering the period 1970-2004 to estimate a model for the chance that a central bank governor is replaced. We formulate a number of hypotheses based on the literature on the determinants of central...

We examine the role of money in the policies of the ECB, using introductory statements of the ECB President at the monthly press conferences during 1999-2004. Over time, the relative amount of words devoted to the monetary analysis has decreased. Our analysis of indicators of the monetary policy...

We examine the role of money in the policies of the ECB, using introductory statements of the ECB President at the monthly press conferences during 1999-2004. Over time, the relative amount of words devoted to the monetary analysis has decreased. Our analysis of indicators of the monetary policy...

We employ a rich sample of individual tax returns data to simulate alternatives to the income tax reform introduced in Germany by the governmental coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in 1998. We characterize three reforms that would have been fiscally equivalent to the actual one: a...

This paper evaluates the Stability and Growth Pact. After examining the rules in place and the experience so far, the Pact is analysed from a political economy perspective, focusing on the choice for so-called soft law and drawing inferences from characteristics of successful fiscal rules at the...

This paper analyses which economic and political factors affect the chance that a country receives IMF credit or signs an agreement with the Fund. We use a panel model for 128 countries over the period 1972-1998. Our results, based on Extreme Bounds Analysis, suggest that it are mostly economic...

We examine the relationship between capitalism and income inequality for a large sample of countries using an adjusted economic freedom index as proxy for capitalism and Gini coefficients based on gross-income as proxy for income inequality. Our results suggest that there is no robust...

We examine systemic risk in the Chinese banking system by estimating the conditional value at risk (CoVaR), the marginal expected shortfall (MES), the systemic impact index (SII) and the vulnerability index (VI) for 16 listed banks in China. Although these measures show different patterns, our...

Using a panel fixed effects model for a sample of 121 countries covering 1975 ]2005, we examine how financial development, financial liberalization and banking crises are related to income inequality. In contrast with most previous work, our results suggest that all finance variables increase...