Papers & Opinions

Electoral politics | Empirics | Financial development | Financial markets | Political institutions | Special interest politics

Markets under Siege: How Political Beliefs Move Financial Markets

Paper

Posted on 12 October 2024

By Saumitra Jha

Can political beliefs, particularly about benefits of war versus peace, move thick financial markets? We document that following an unlikely victory by French citizen-soldiers during the German Siege of Paris...
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Electoral politics | Empirics | Political institutions

Valuing Peace: The Effects of Financial Market Exposure on Votes and Political Attitudes

Paper

Posted on 1 May 2024

By Saumitra Jha

Can participation in financial markets lead individuals to reevaluate the costs of conflict, change their political attitudes, and even their votes? Prior to the 2015 Israeli elections, we randomly assigned...
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Empirics | Financial markets | Political institutions

Financial Market Exposure Increases Generalized Trust, Particularly Among the Politically Polarized

Paper

Posted on 19 April 2024

By Saumitra Jha

How can we build trust, especially in polarized societies? We propose that exposure to broad financial markets—where individuals place their assets in the hands of large groups of unfamiliar agents...
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Empirics | Financial development | Political institutions

Financial Asset Holdings and Political Attitudes

Paper

Posted on 22 March 2024

By Saumitra Jha

The English Parliament’s struggle for supremacy against monarchical dictatorship during the Civil War (1642–1648) was crucial for the establishment of representative government, yet its lessons continue to be debated. I...
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Central banking | Political institutions | Regulation

Central Bank Independence in Latin America: Politicization and De-delegation

Paper

Posted on 20 April 2023

By Ana Carolina Garriga

In the last three decades, legal delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks (CBI) has achieved the status of a global norm of good governance. The recent backlash against this...
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Corporate finance | Empirics | Political institutions

Democracy as a Fundamental Determinant of Cross-Border Merger Activity

Paper

Posted on 5 September 2022

By Thomas Lambert

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...
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Central banking | Political institutions

The Political Economy of Reforms in Central Bank Design

Paper

Posted on 25 September 2021

By Davide Romelli

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...
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Empirics | Political institutions | Special interest politics

Why We Don’t Write More Papers on Political Finance

Opinion

Posted on 17 August 2021

By Orkun Saka

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...
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Electoral politics | Media | Regulation

Finance and Politics: New Insights

Opinion

Posted on 4 August 2021

By Orkun Saka

A rapidly expanding literature has shown the importance of political economy factors for legislative and regulatory actions in the financial sector and ultimately financial sector stability and efficiency. This column...
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Central banking | Political institutions | Regulation | Special interest politics

Political Economy in Finance

Opinion

Posted on 6 July 2021

By Enrico Perotti

This post reports on recent work presented at the first edition of the CEPR Conference Series on the Political Economy of Finance, which focused on the politics of regulation and...
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