This paper investigates whether in OECD-countries the negative relation between central bank independence and inflation is related to culture, in the sense of common values and norms. It appears that inflation is lower in countries where people dislike uncertainty. The tolerance in a society...

We use Bulgarian firm level data to investigate the impact of liquidity constraints on investment performance. Internal funds are an important determinant of investment in most industrialized countries. We test whether internal funds are important for firm investment during the current...

Although during the last decades the importance of stock markets has increased in all OECD countries, the cross-country differences appear to be remarkably stable. In this paper we relate the factors determining cross-country differences in stock market activity to deeply rooted norms and values...

Sovereign default is the switching state between successful and unsuccessful Fund catalysis. We find the IMF to be effective in mobilising private capital flows to middle-income countries that participate in a Fund program, but do not restructure their debt. A debt restructuring is a clear...

We study the number of hours children in Africa and Asia are involved in paid child labor on the basis of a newly developed database with information on 169 000 children living in 16 countries. The proportion of involved children varies between 1 and 8 per cent, with generally lower figures in...

We estimate a dynamic heterogeneous agents model for the British pound during the European monetary system crisis. We illustrate the chain of events leading to the suspension of the pound from the exchange rate mechanism in terms of switching beliefs, from fundamentalist to chartist.

In his article ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, Ha-Joon Chang rightly argues that historical evidence does not irrefutably suggest that countries characterized by free markets perform better than those in which the state plays a much more prominent role....

In this paper, we propose an empirical model based on the heterogeneous agents literature. Price changes are induced by fundamental, technical, and international factors. The model is estimated for Hong Kong and Thailand surrounding the Asian crisis. We find that the three sources are relevant...