World War I was fought by numerous countries siding together as the Central Powers and, respectively, the Allied Powers. The former established around the German Empire and Austria-Hungary and grew to four allies when the Ottoman Empire in late 1914 and Bulgaria in late 1915 entered the scene;...

Germany prides itself in having one of the most successful central banks and currencies with respect to independence and stability. I show that not only were both imposed on the country after 1945 but that there was also initial resistance to both among German experts and officials. This is a...

Germany prides itself in having one of the most successful central banks and currencies with respect to independence and stability. I show that not only were both imposed on the country after 1945 but that there was also initial resistance to both among German experts and officials. This was...

I use the global crisis of 1914 as a window onto the phenomenon of investor reaction to complex news — such as sudden political upheaval. Based on a novel database of all stocks traded on the NYSE during 1914, along with “real-time” news accounts from major newspapers, I show that NYSE...

Art is often presented as an investment of last resort or a potential safe haven in times of political or financial distress. Yet, as no study has focused on the performance of art markets in times of crisis, this paper fills this gap by means of unclosing historical auction archives. We trace...

There is little causal evidence about deep-rooted sources of support for shifting power from nation-states to international organizations. Focusing on the European Union, this paper develops the hypothesis that citizens appreciate the role of international organizations in constraining member...

Terrorism is a major issue in the 21st century. In this paper we examine the effect of terrorism on the stock market. We go beyond previous studies to explore the spectre of terrorism on the market rather than terrorist activities. Using a narrative-based approach à la Shiller (2019), we find...

We exploit a unique dataset of country-specific military expenditures and construct a proxy for international instability, measured as the growth of the global military expenditure to GDP ratio, to capture political tensions and international conflicts. Using the market indices of 44 countries,...

In den Wirtschaftswissenschaften lassen sich zwei Theorietypen unterscheiden: Die "idealistische Ökonomie" geht von einem Idealzustand aus und untersucht die Bedingungen, unter denen dieser erreicht werden kann wie die Eigenschaften des "homo oeconomicus". Die "realistische Ökonomie" geht vom...

Using a news-based gauge of geopolitical risk, we study its role for asset pricing in global emerging markets. We find that changes in risk positively predict future stock returns. The countries with the highest increase in geopolitical uncertainty outperform their counterparts with the lowest...