We study alternative institutional arrangements for the determination of monetary policy in a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents, where monetary policy has redistributive effects. Inflation is determined by a policy board using either simple-majority voting, supermajority...

We present a theoretical basis for testing related endpoints. Typically, it is known how to construct tests of the individual hypotheses, and the problem is how to combine them into a multiple test procedure that controls the familywise error rate. Using the closure method, we emphasize the role...

The empirical failure of the uncovered interest rate parity condition seems to be the reflection of risk premia on foreign currencies. After the formation of foreign currency portfolios according to interest rate differentials or forward discounts, recent studies suggest that either consumption-...

This paper studies the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986-2006. We estimate VARs for individual economies and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries on...

We analyze the evolution of culture when parents socialize children to the cultural variants that maximize child lifetime utility. Parents invest in cultural transmission taking into account that children are also influenced by peers. We model the influence of peers by assuming that children...

We consider a principal-agent model in which a task, demanding a sequence of efforts by the agent, must be completed by a certain date. Effort is not contractible. Agents are subject to shocks affecting their opportunity cost of time such that they are distracted from work when the opportunity...

We study whether the effects on registered manufacturing output of dismantling the License Raj - a system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in this sector - vary across Indian states with different labor market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal across...

In spite of two decades of financial globalization, consumption-based indicators do not seem to signal more international risk sharing. We argue that consumption risk sharing among industrialised countries has actually increased - in particular since the 1990s - but that standard...

This paper analyzes and compares different ways of assessing how people perceived impending threats of war in the past. Conventional Nordic historiography of World War II claims there were few, if any, people in the Nordic countries who perceived a significantly increased threat of war between...

Relying on a simple endogenous growth model, this paper highlights a political instability effect as a potential explanation for why foreign aid is frequently ineffective with respect to economic performance. In the present framework, the role of the state is to fund institutions allowing for...