We study when firms choose to install boards and their roles in a historical setting where neither boards nor their duties are mandated by law. Boards arise in firms with large, heterogenous shareholder bases. We propose that an important role of boards is to mediate between heterogenous...

In 1982, the US Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) as the sole appellate court for patent cases. Ostensibly, this court was created to eliminate inconsistencies in the application and interpretation of patent law across federal courts, and thereby mitigate...

We investigate the relationship between corruption and political stability, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We propose a model of incumbent behavior that is driven by the interplay of two effects: A horizon effect, whereby greater instability leads the incumbent to embezzle...

Fiscal policy in Britain has changed radically since the Keynesianism of the 1960s and 1970s. After a passive period under monetarism of the 1980s, fiscal policy is said to have adopted a leadership role with long term objectives (low debt, the provision of public services/investment, and social...

Shocks to net migration matter for the business cycles of some countries. Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy and a structural vector autoregression, we find that migration shocks account for a considerable proportion of the variability...

We test the significance of the relationship between the exchange rate regime and the degree of structural reforms by estimating panel regressions for a world and an OECD country sample. The empirical results suggest a positive correlation between on the one side the adoption of an exchange rate...

This paper examines the contemporaneous relationship between the exchange rate regime and structural economic reforms over a period of 30 years. Using panel data techniques, we look at both a broad (world sample) and an OECD country sample. We investigate empirically whether structural reforms...

This paper examines the contemporaneous relationship between the exchange rate regime and structural economic reforms over a period of 30 years. We investigate empirically whether structural reforms are complements or substitutes for monetary commitment in the attempt to improve macroeconomic...