Political institutions

    Papers & Opinions


    Paper


    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...

    Paper


    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...

    Paper


    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...

    Paper


    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...

    Paper


    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...

    Paper


    Posted on 18 October 2021

    This paper provides novel evidence that female politicians increase the proportion of US government procurement contracts allocated to women-owned firms. The identification strategy uses close elections for the US House...

    Paper


    Posted on 10 October 2021

    This paper investigates whether parliamentary hearings are effective in holding central banks accountable against their mandates. To this end, it applies text analysis on the hearings of the Bank of...

    Paper


    Posted on 25 September 2021

    What explains the worldwide changes in central bank design over the past five decades? Using a new dataset on central bank institutional design, this paper investigates the timing, pace and...

    Paper


    Posted on 21 September 2021

    Risk premia are significantly elevated during periods of democratization in a cross-country panel of equity data covering 85 countries over 200 years, despite little evidence of a negative effect on...

    Paper


    Posted on 20 September 2021

    This paper studies voting in shareholders meetings. We focus on the informational efficiency of different voting mechanisms, taking into account that they affect both management's incentives before the meeting and...

    Opinion


    Posted on 16 September 2021

    Recent wildfires in Turkey have not only destroyed more than 95,000 hectares of its coastal forestland but also divided the country further into its political colors. This piece discusses the...

    Paper


    Posted on 30 August 2021

    Previous scholarship on central bank accountability has generally focused on monetary authorities' deeds and words while largely ignoring the other side of the accountability relationship, namely politicians' voice on monetary...

    Opinion


    Posted on 17 August 2021

    Despite the commonly held views of economists on regulatory capture, our profession has been much more hesitant in recognising similar conflicts of interests that may exist in economics research. This...

    Paper


    Posted on 2 August 2021

    This paper analyzes the effect of the composition of the electorate on corporate prospects. Electorates constantly change, and support-maximizing policymakers adjust their legislative behavior to accommodate shifts in voter preferences....

    Paper


    Posted on 15 July 2021

    What political legacy is bequeathed by national health crises such as epidemics? We show that epidemic exposure in an individual’s “impressionable years” (ages 18 to 25) has a persistent negative...