The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of Treaty reform and its consequences for monetary policy. Inter alia, the changes include that the institutional set-up will be subtly changed and the European Central Bank (ECB) will be grouped in the first part of the Treaty as one of the...

This paper introduces new data on the term in office of central bank governors in 137 countries for 1970-2004. Our panel models show that the probability that a central bank governor is replaced in a particular year is positively related to the share of the term in office elapsed, political and...

Well-functioning institutions, both formal (i.e. rule of law) and informal (i.e. trust), facilitate economic exchange. To investigate the nature of the relationship between formal and informal institutions, we analyze bilateral trade patterns in a sample of 16 European countries between...