The effectiveness of a central bank's monetary policy depends on the incentives of its head and board members to pursue an efficient policy in the citizens interest. Today, however, these incentives are weakened by three kinds of regulations. First, in almost all countries, only nationals may be...

Do politicians with a military background decide differently on military affairs? We investigate the informative institutional setting of the Swiss conscription army. Politicians who served in the military have a higher probability of accepting pro-military legislative proposals, even when...

We analyze political representation of preferences of different income groups by matching referendum outcomes for low, middle, and high-income voters with individual legislators' decisions on identical policy proposals. Results indicate that legislators more closely represent preferences of rich...

We identify the impact of transparency in political decision -making on the quality of political representation with a difference- in-difference strategy. The quality of political representation is measured by observed divergence of parliamentary decisions from revealed voter preferences on the...

In economies with reasonably mobile individuals, the demand for property depends on current as well as future taxes and public services. As a consequence, the current level of public net debts, i.e. public debts minus assets, should capitalize into property prices. While debt capitalization has...

It is well established that individual parliamentary representatives are less likely to decide according to the preferences of their constituency when the number of representatives per district, i.e. district magnitude, increases. However, we propose that for majority decisions of district...