By Kris Mitchener | Posted on 9 February 2023

Because of secrecy, little is known about the political economy of central bank lending. Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal...


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 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 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...


By Jörg Stahl | Posted on 23 August 2021

We present novel evidence on the value of cross-border political access. We analyze data on meetings of US multinational enterprises (MNEs) with European Commission (EC) policymakers. Meetings with Commissioners are...


By Thomas Lambert | Posted on 30 June 2021

In this paper, we study the consequences of banks’ political connectedness for economic activity. We focus on the subset of banks that donate to candidates in US congressional elections, and...


By Magdalena Rola-Janicka | Posted on 21 May 2021

This paper introduces a voting model into a setting with negative borrowing externalities to study voter preferences for prudential regulation. Voters internalize the general equilibrium impact of prudential policy on...