We measure whether religious people in the UK cope better during a large negative shock - the nationwide pandemic lockdowns. We use data from the Understanding Society longitudinal dataset, including self-reports on religion and religiosity taken before the pandemic, and mental health data on...

Traditional ways of analyzing the effects of monetary policy shocks via structural vector autoregressions require the use of unrealistic identifying assumptions: they either do not allow for a response of output and prices on impact of the shock, or they exclude contemporaneous values of these...

Is over-optimism about a country's future growth perspective good for an economy, or doesover-optimism also come with costs? In this paper we provide evidence that recessions, fiscalproblems, as well as Balance of Payment-difficulties are more likely to arise in countrieswhere past growth...

Is over-optimism about a country's future growth perspective good for an economy, or does over-optimism also come with costs? In this paper we document that recessions, fiscal problems, as well as Balance of Payment-difficulties are more likely to arise in countries where past growth...

Identifying monetary policy shocks is difficult. Therefore, instead of trying to do this perfectly, this paper exploits a natural setting that reduces the con sequences of shock misidentification. It does so by inferring from the responses of variables in dollarized countries. They import US...

Is over-optimism about a country's future growth perspective good for an economy, or does over-optimism also come with costs? In this paper we provide evidence that recessions, fiscal problems, as well as Balance of Payment-difficulties are more likely to arise in countries where past growth...