We investigate the impact of the European Central Bank's monetary policy an- nouncements on the level and volatility of the EUR-US Dollar exchange rate em- ploying an AR-FIGARCH specification. Using high-frequency data we estimate the individual and complementary effects of the release of the...

There is a growing interest in studying the disagreement of economic agents. Most studies, however, focus on the disagreement regarding one specific variable, hereby neglecting that disagreement may be comoving with disagreement on other variables. In this paper we explore to which extent...

Using firm-level data for up to 707 Swiss hotels and restaurants we evaluate the economic impact of the EURO 2008 soccer championship. Although aggregated macro data reveal no economic impact, we report an overall negative effect based on the surveyed companies. Notably the reported effects of...

This paper investigates the effects of media coverage and macroeconomic con- ditions on inflation forecast disagreement of German households and professional forecasters. We adopt a Bayesian learning model in which media coverage of infla- tion affects forecast disagreement by influencing...

There are many stories of democracy but little consensus over which variables robustly determine its emergence and survival. We apply extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of 59 factors proposed in the literature, evaluating over 3 million regressions. The most robust determinants of...

This paper analyzes whether the educational and professional background of a head of government matters for the implementation of market-liberalizing reforms. Employing panel data over the period 1970-2002, we present empirical evidence based on a novel data set covering profession and education...

This paper analyzes the impact of the media on consumers' inflation expectations. We distinguish two channels through which media can influence expectations. First, the intensity of news coverage on inflation plays a role (volume channel). Second, the content of these reports matters (tone...

This paper tests the existence of strategic information complementarities as a source of sectoral comovement. A theoretical model derived in Veldkamp and Wolfers (2007) explains sectoral comovement by the assumption that firms rely too much on aggregate information to make output decisions. We...

In the aftermath of the euro cash changeover consumers’ inflation perceptions rose substantially in the euro area countries while actual inflation figures remained almost unchanged. During that period media reporting on the potentially large inflationary effect of the euro introduction...

This paper investigates how inflation expectations evolve. In particular, we analyze the time-varying nature of the propensity to update expectations and its potential determinants. For this purpose we set up a flexible econometric model that tracks the formation of inflation expectations of...