It has been argued that central bank independence (CBI) may not only be beneficial for reaching the objective of price stability, but also for maintaining financial stability. Greater independence from external pressure implies that central banks are less politically constrained in acting to...

We examine the effect of political 'institutions' on economic growth volatility, using data from more than 100 countries over the period 1960 to 2005, taking into account various control variables as suggested in previous studies. Our indicator of volatility is the relative standard deviation of...

We test the hypothesis that governments facing popular protest are more likely to use fiscal policy for re-election purposes, employing data of 65 democratic countries–both developed and developing–over the period 1975–2005. Using the number of anti-government demonstrations and general...

We analyze whether the political system and its stability are related to cross-country differences in health. We apply factor analysis on various national health indicators for a large sample of countries over the period 2000-2005 and use the outcomes of the factor analysis to construct two new...