If women have different economic preferences than men, then female economic and political empowerment is likely to change policy and household decisions, and in turn macroeconomic outcomes. We test the hypothesis that female enfranchisement leads to lower government budget deficits due gender...

This paper tests for the existence of contagion during the 1997/98 Asian crisis. We interpret contagion as a significant change in the way that country-specific shocks are transmitted across international financial markets. Using the full-information framework of Favero and Giavazzi (2002) we...

If women make different economic decisions than men on average, then an increase in women's influence in the political and economic spheres of society might change economic outcomes. In this note, we focus on the impact of female enfranchisement on fiscal policy outcomes. We present a simple...

This paper focuses on the observed empirical relationship between fiscal rules and budget deficits, and examines whether this correlation is driven by an omitted variable, namely voter preferences. We make use of two different estimation methods to capture voter preferences in a panel of Swiss...

Financial market interdependence has been at the epicenter of the crisis in the euro area. This paper tests for the existence of financial contagion during this crisis, defined as the international transmission of country-specific shocks beyond the normal channels of financial interdependence....

Financial market interdependence has been at the epicenter of the crisis in the euro area. This paper tests for the existence of financial contagion during this crisis, defined as the international transmission of country-specific shocks beyond the normal channels of financial interdependence....

The decoupling hypothesis is the idea that business cycles in emerging market economies have become more independent from business cycles in advanced economies in recent years. Decoupling essentially amounts to a structural break in the degree of business cycle interdependence between the two...

Citizens’ trust in economic institutions has generally declined since the onset of the crisis. In particular, Eurobarometer surveys show that trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) has fallen significantly during the crisis. This paper studies the determinants of public trust in the ECB over...

This book chapter provides for a review of quantity-based and price-based indicators of regional financial integration. These measures should be easy to construct and interpret, based on publicly available data, and available for many countries and regions over time. The chapter discusses the...

This paper studies the survival of fixed exchange rate regimes. The probability of an exit from a fixed exchange rate regime depends on the time spent within this regime. In such a context durations models are appropriate, in particular because of the possible non-monotonic pattern of duration...