This paper examines which set of informations voters use when they cast their vote. On the one hand, electoral accountability models assume that voters rely on past policy decisions of the incumbent politician. Gathering this information is, however, often costly. On the other hand, voters may...

This paper tests the Political Legislation Cycle theory on French data. The theory predicts a peak of legislative production in the pre-electoral period, when the legislator increases voters’ utility in order to be reelected. France is unique in that two elections set up the pace of political...

We use data about the Italian Constitutional Court (1956-2005) to verify an implication of the “revisionist” explanations of judicial independence with respect to judicial appointments, namely that elected politicians reward more independent justices with appointments after the Court tenure....

This article introduces a new database focusing on the legislative production as well as the characteristics of the governments in France, from the early months of the Vth Republic in January 1959 to the end of the XIIIth legislature in March 2012. It provides a large amount of variables...

Latvia has one of the highest levels of income inequality and poverty in the EU. In this article, we argue that distributional considerations, especially assistance for those really in need, have had a low priority in designing tax and benefit policy in Latvia. We estimate the distributional...

Inflation and its dynamics feature among the most important indicators in the focus of such economic agents as producers, consumers, investors, monetary and fiscal policy makers. Risks of high inflation or deflation enhance the need to profoundly investigate factors and causes of unfavourable...

Latvia's accession to the EU and its resolute policy oriented toward a full-fledged participation in the EMU, have highlighted the need for a profound investigation into the country's labour market. A flexible labour market is a key policy instrument for a country in the single currency area to...

The current paper aims at estimating the formation mechanism of business inflation expectations to find out how the latter affect the inflation dynamics. To attain this goal, the authors estimated the traditional Phillips curve, new Keynesian Phillips curve and hybrid Phillips curve. The results...

Inflation and its dynamics are among the most important indicators in the focus of such economic agents as producers, consumers, investors, and monetary and fiscal policy makers. Risks of high inflation or deflation enhance the need to profoundly investigate factors and causes that could...