As institutions matter for political and economic outcomes, they are (at least partly) shaped by the interests of political agents acting under these limitations. However, empirical evidence documenting such endogenous change of institutions is scarce. We address the issue by examining the link...

We derive counterfactual national interest rate paths for the 17 Euro Area countries for the period 1999 to 2012 to approximate the interest rates countries would have implemented had they still been able to conduct independent monetary policy. We find that prior to the financial crisis the...

Recent contributions to the political economics literature (Trebbi et al. 2007; Aghion et al. 2004) have challenged the view that political institutions are exogenous to the behaviour of agents in the political arena. We explicitly address the potential endogeneity of institutions by examining the...

Recent contributions to the political economics literature (Trebbi et al. 2007; Aghion et al. 2004) have challenged the view that political institutions are exogenous to the behavior of agents in the political arena. We explicitly address the potential endogeneity of institu- tions by examining the...

Measuring the effect of ballot access restrictions on electoral competition is complicated because the stringency of ballot access regulations cannot be treated as being exogenous to candidates' entry decisions. This paper exploits the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Ohio's...

This paper introduces hyperbolic discounting into politics. In our model, politicians act according to the preferences of voters in order to be re-elected. As voters' preferences are dynamically inconsistent, the political process results in an allocation of the public budget that is distorted...