This paper examines President Obama's rhetoric concerning financial regulation during 2009-10, during legislative action on financial reform. The study evaluates the use of basic automated textual analysis. This requires addressing a number of unresolved analytical issues. This study offers some...

As Jeff Madrick makes clear, the single-minded pursuit of huge personal wealth has been on the rise in the United States since the 1970s, led by a few individuals who argue that self-interest guides society more effectively than community concerns. In telling the stories of these politicians,...

This paper illustrates why the European Central Bank has obligations that go far beyond economic and financial market-related responsibilities. As a European institution, it is committed to a core set of values, especially with regard to the preservation of human rights. These obligations are...

We assemble a novel dataset on transitions in central bank leadership in several countries, and study how monetary policy is conducted around those events. We find that policy is tighter both at the last meetings of departing governors and first meetings of incoming leaders. This finding cannot...

In an earlier paper (Blinder and Morgan, 2005), we created an experimental apparatus in which Princeton University students acted as ersatz central bankers, making monetary policy decisions both as individuals and in groups. In this study, we manipulate the size and leadership structure of...