Bigger governments raise the possibilities for corruption; more corruption may in turn raise the support for redistributive policies that intend to correct the inequality and injustice generated by corruption. We formalize these insights in a simple dynamic model. A positive feedback from past...

Why do countries delay stabilizations of large and increasing budget deficits and inflation? And what explains the timing of reforms? We use the war of attrition model as a guidance for our empirical study on a vast sample of countries. We find that stabilizations are more likely to occur when...

The answer is yes. By using a unique and large data set on overdraft contracts between banks and microfirms and self-employed individuals, we find robust evidence that women in Italy pay more for overdraft facilities than men. We could not find any evidence that women are riskier then men. The...

In this paper, we extend the bank run literature to an open economy model. We show that a foreign banking system, by raising deposit rates in the presence of a domestic banking panic, may generate sufficient liquid resources to acquire assets sold by the domestic banking system at bargain...

This paper addresses two questions: (1) Is a twelve country monetary union in Europe feasible; (2) Can monetary union be achieved at multi-speed, i.e., with a rust group of countries going first, and later admitting the others? After examining several politico-economic arguments concerning...

This paper studies how the creation of a European Central Bank (ECB) will change the political economy of monetary policy in Europe. The twelve governors of the national Central Banks of the EEC have recently proposed a statute for the ECB which delineates its institutional structure. In this...

This paper calculates international income transfers which implement a Pareto optimal trade equilibrium in a world where many countries trade many goods.

This paper addresses two questions: (1) Is a twelve-country monetary union in Europe feasible? (2) Can monetary union be achieved at multispeed, i.e., with a small group of countries going first, and later admitting the others? After examining several politico-economic arguments concerning...