This paper studies the effects of FOMC communication on U.S. financial markets’ returns and volatility using a GARCH model over the period from 1998 to 2006. We build a new data set that includes information on all FOMC speeches, post-meeting statements, monetary policy reports and...

Using a narrative account of quarterly discretionary changes in tax liabilities from 1974Q4 to 2018Q2 in a VAR setting, we study whether legislative tax changes affect the trade balance in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. As legislative tax changes we consider (i) all changes,...

We study the announcement effect of legislated tax changes on GDP in the US, Germany, and the UK. Using, as the shock of interest, narratively identified information (Romer & Romer, 2009) about future tax changes at the quarter of their introduction to the legislative body, we analyse the...

A widespread view in the "political budget cycles" literature is that incumbent politicians seek to influence voters' perceptions of their competence and/or preferences by using the composition of the fiscal budget as a signalling tool. However, little is known about whether voters actually...

We analyse the impact of news on five financial markets in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland using a newly constructed data set in a GARCH framework. Macroeconomic shocks (on GDP, inflation rate, current account and trade balance) are constructed as deviations from expected values....