Some committees are made up of experts, persons who care both about the matter at hand and about coming across as able decision makers. We show that such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. That is, once the decision has been reached, they show a united front to the...

We use panel estimates of regional Phillips curves of the hybrid New Keynesian type to study price level convergence within the US and EMU. Regional inflation rates tend to eliminate PPP deviations in both monetary unions, with average half-lives around 3½ years. The start of EMU did not...

This paper contributes to the literature on the relation between bank profitability and economic activity. When allowing for stronger co-movement of bank profit with economic activity during deep recessions, we find a much larger impact of output growth on bank profitability than commonly found...