Daß die Sowjetunion zusammenbrechen und Deutschland wieder vereint werden würde, hat vor1989 eigentlich niemand geglaubt. Das Buch des russischen Dissidenten Amalrik "Kann dieSowjetunion das Jahr 1984 überleben" wurde ähnlich wie Weltuntergangsprognosen religiöserSekten belächelt, obgleich...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutionsare fundamental for a country’s prosperity. The paper focuses on political events inItaly over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 hashelped insulate Italy’s financial...

This paper delineates the simultaneous impact of non-anticipated information onmean and variance of the intraday return process by including appropriate variablesaccounting for the news flow into both the mean and the variance function. This allowsus to differentiate between the consistent price...

We consider a median voter model with uncertainty about how theeconomy functions. The distribution of income is exogenously given andthe provision of a public good is ¯nanced through a proportional tax.Voters and politicians do not know the true production function for thepublic good, but by...

A crucial aspect of constitutional design is the provision of rules onhow a constitution is to be amended. If procedures for constitutional amendmentare very restrictive, changes will take place outside the constitution. Thesechanges are likely to be against the citizens’ interests and their...

The structure and regulation of a country’s financialmarkets and institutions are the focus of considerablepolicy attention for a number of economic and politicalreasons. Banks and other financial institutions encourage andcollect the savings that finance a country’s economic growth.By...

[...]We begin by discussing the so-called first generation ofmodels, in which crises are viewed in the literature as theunavoidable result of unsustainable policies or fundamentalimbalances. Next, we survey the literature on the secondgeneration of models, which highlights the possibility of...

[...]This article contributes factually to the debate over theopening of emerging markets to foreign participation byexploring the experiences of Argentina and Mexico—two markets that exhibit a significant degree and duration offoreign bank activity.We begin our analysis by presenting the...