We study the effect of divisions within the elite on the probability of internalconflict in the Papal States between 1295 and 1846. We assemble a new databaseusing information on cardinals that participated in conclaves during this period,and construct measures of polarization and...

In a recent and insightful paper, Echenique et al. [4] proposed the Money Pump Index(MPI) as an intuitive measure to evaluate the severity of violations of consumer rationality(defined in terms of revealed preference axioms). For practical applications, they suggest usingthe Mean or Median MPI....

Charlier, Paindaveine, and Saracco (2014) recently introduced a nonparametric estimatorof conditional quantiles based on optimal quantization, but almost exclusively focused onits theoretical properties. In this paper, (i) we discuss its practical implementation (byproposing in particular a...

This study evaluates the macroeconomic effects of Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT)announcements by the European Central Bank (ECB). Using high-frequency data, we find that OMTannouncements decreased the Italian and Spanish 2-year government bond yields by about 2percentage points, while...