Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience offer systematic evidence that fictional works exert a surprisingly strong influence on readers and have the power to shape their opinions and worldviews. Building on these findings, we study ‘Potterian economics’, the economic ideas, insights...

Ever since the spectacular boom and bust cycle of the Spanish real estate industry, endemic corruption at the local level has become a widely recognized problem in the national public discourse. In an effort to expose an under-explored political determinant, this paper investigates the effect of...

This paper presents a model of political competition to explore the effect that the ideological distance between two political parties has over the provision of public goods. The main result argues that the ideological distance between parties and citizens has a negative relationship with the...

We examine whether changes of government influence compliance with international agreements. We investigate compliance with the NATO two percent target to which all NATO countries committed themselves during the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. The dataset includes the military expenditure by NATO...

In this paper, using a dynamic panel of 21 OECD countries, we find that, unlike the other OECD countries in the sample, wage setting institutions, competition conditions, public finances, and external imbalances can account for the behavior of the public sector wage premium (WPR) and the...

This study examines whether state-owned banks face political pressure and whether the improvement in political institutions alleviates this pressure. The theory of political benefits argues that politicians use state-owned banks for political purposes such as obtaining and maintaining political...

Staatliche Banken können eine wichtige Rolle bei der Sicherung der Funktionsfähigkeit von Finanzsystemen und für die gesamtwirtschaftliche Entwicklung spielen. Dies gilt offenbar vor allem dann, wenn die Bankenregulierung schwach ist und Banken nicht ausreichend überwacht werden. Die...

Democracy, income inequality and economic development are considered to be interlinked with one another in a complex way. The weak growth of political institutions and uncertainty about the continuity of democratic regimes in Pakistan has important consequences for the economic growth and level...

Seit Beginn der neunziger Jahre sind in hohem Umfang ausländische Direktinvestitionen in die neuen EU-Mitgliedstaaten geflossen. Von Unternehmen werden neben niedrigen Arbeitskosten und geringer Steuerbelastung die geringe Regulierungsdichte und eine effiziente Verwaltung als wesentliche...

Constitutional democracy is in decline and many would-be autocrats try to transgress constitutional constraints. Here, we introduce the concept of militant constitutionalism, which suggests a number of constitutional rules that could make constitutions more resilient to attempts to undermine...