We examine the relationship between different dimensions of the political regime in place and human capital using a two-step structural equation model. In the first step, we employ factor analysis on 16 human capital indicators to construct two new human capital measures (basic and advanced...

Using data for more than 160 countries in the period 1997–2010, we explore the impact of large-scale natural disasters on the distance-to-default of commercial banks. The financial consequences of natural catastrophes may stress and threaten the existence of a bank by adversely affecting their...

We use cross-country data to explore whether temperature and rainfall shocks trigger violent conflict, or not. We include a wide range of country and time samples, and explore whether the impact of weather shocks is conditional on income or political regimes. Our overall conclusion is sobering....

We examine the effectiveness of the financial sector rescue packages provided by the national governments during the 2008 financial crisis. This study questions the implicit assumption that government interventions have an uniform effect on the default risk of individual banks. After testing the...