By Miles Kellerman | Posted on 29 March 2023

National surveillance is often insufficient to identify transnational issues. One solution to this problem is to delegate to international organizations (IOs) the power to surveil activity in numerous states simultaneously,...


By Alex Michaelides | Posted on 25 January 2023

Since the 1980s many countries have reformed the institutional framework governing their central banks to increase operational independence. Collecting systematic biographical information, international press coverage, and independent expert opinions, we...


By Linxiang Ma | Posted on 3 October 2022

Ideology, the belief system about "how the society should be governed" that some group of people collectively sustains, is a critical factor that motivates economic decisions in democratic countries. However,...


By Thomas Lambert | Posted on 5 September 2022

Does democracy shape international merger activity? If so, how? The short answer is yes because democratic institutions are conducive to higher-quality corporate governance. In a new paper, we examine 104,425...


By Nicolo Fraccaroli | Posted on 25 May 2022

We investigate the link between ideology and the sentiments of parliamentarians when they speak to the central bank they hold accountable. To this end, we collect textual data on the...


By Ana Carolina Garriga | Posted on 30 April 2022

The ability to finance conflict likely affects the odds of sustaining a war and succeeding in it. Recent literature explores rebel group funding, but far less is known about how...


By Max Miller | Posted on 4 April 2022

We provide the first large-sample evidence of foreign influence in US politics, showing that meetings between foreign countries and legislators affect government resource allocation directly for countries and indirectly for...


By Pia Huettl | Posted on 17 January 2022

This paper investigates the political ties of too-big-to-fail bank boards in crisis times. We argue that after a bailout, governments are likely to influence bank board compositions to secure control...


By Kartik Anand | Posted on 22 November 2021

We examine why rational voters support risky “policy gambles”, even when detrimental to welfare, over maintaining a safe status quo. We present a model of electoral competition with two groups...


By Nataliya Gerasimova | Posted on 15 November 2021

I document that political connections are an important driver of investment strategies of U.S. mutual funds. I collect data on mutual fund holdings of U.S. Congress members and equity holdings...