This paper investigates the investment behaviour of a large panel of Hungarian firms in the period 1989–99, in order to assess the impact of institutional and regulatory changes on the efficiency of credit allocation. We find that the role of financial factors for investment decisions has...

Non technical abstract: The recent empirical and theoretical literature on the political economy of development has investigated the impact of institutional quality mostly in terms of growth. Relatively less attention has been devoted to the distributional consequences of institutional...

We study the effect of primary commodities on development indicators in a sample of 86 countries over the period 1965-2005. To this purpose we employ a system of equations. We use interactive terms to estimate separate slope coefficients for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Central African...

COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) aims at establishing a currency union by 2025. To this end, a policy harmonisation programme and a set of convergence criteria have been set up. A number of projects to foster trade, economic and financial integration have also been...

In this paper, the consequences on financial stability of the institutional design envisaged in the Maastricht Treaty – which implicitly assigns the objective of financial stability to the National Central Banks (NCBs) – are assessed. The Maastricht Treaty spells out precisely the role of...

We reconsider Svensson’s inflation-targeting proposal in a model where the need to raise seigniorage revenues determines the socially optimal inflation rate and distortionary taxes cause the inflation bias. Interpreting the targets as contracts, we show that the interaction between fiscal and...

In this paper, we discuss a reform proposal for EMU macroeconomic institutions which rests on the generalised adoption of targets, for both monetary and fiscal policies, to be integrated by a system of checks and balances. The new arrangements for fiscal policies should induce EMU countries to...