This paper examines how managers at the top of a public institution, central bank executives, allocate their working time. Using detailed information from personal diaries of the six members of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board over a period of two years, we codify and analyze more...

We study the effects of financial sanctions on cross-border credit supply. Using a differences-in-differences approach to analyze eleven sanctions episodes between 2002 and 2015, we find that banks located in Germany reduce their positions in countries with sanctioned entities by 38%. The...

Terrorist events typically vary along many dimensions, making it difficult to identify their economic effects. This paper analyzes the impact of terrorism on international trade by examining a series of three large-scale terrorist incidents in France over the period from January 2015 to July...

This paper examines the effect of national government response measures to Covid-19 on German international capital flows. Analyzing highly disaggregated monthly data from the German balance of payments statistics over the period from January 2019 through January 2021, we find that bilateral...

We examine the extent to which financial sanctions imposed by Germany through its European Union and United Nations commitments cause collateral damage on Germany's trade in goods and services. Financial sanctions reduce Germany's inflows and outflows of financial assets, as well as imports and...

Language is a strong and robust determinant of international trade patterns: Countries sharing a common language trade significantly more with each other than countries using different languages, holding other factors constant. In this paper, we show that this trade-promoting effect of language...

Historically, dissolutions of currency unions are not unusual. I use an annual panel data set covering 245 country pairs that use a common currency (of which 128 are dissolved) from 1948 through 1997 to characterize currency union exits. I find that departures from a currency union tend to occur...

Hosting a mega-event is a costly activity of short duration. Still, cities frequently compete to become host of all types of events. This paper examines the effect of staging the largest and most important sporting event in the world, the Summer Olympic Games, on the host city. Applying a...

In 1999, eleven European countries formed the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); they abandoned their national currencies and adopted a new common currency, the euro. Several recent papers argue that the introduction of the euro has led (by itself) to a sizable and statistically significant...

Politicians travel extensively abroad, for various reasons. One purpose of external visits is to improve bilateral economic relations. In this paper, I examine the effect of state visits on international trade. I use a large data set covering the travel activities of the heads of state of...