The global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis in Europe provide evidence that portfolio rebalancing of financial investors can contribute to spread financial turmoil across countries. Rebalancing of portfolios, in turn, may be driven by the need to meet liquidity...

Using the 2008-09 global financial crisis, this paper examines the role of different forms of international financial integration for asset price contagion in crisis times. Defining contagion as the transmission of financial market movements beyond the co-movements that would occur in 'tranquil'...

This article investigates the connection between the apparently uncorrelated issues of tax evasion and privatisation. We first determine how the political process - given a country's level of development and income distribution - will determine the efficiency of its tax system. We then regard...

Over the last two decades, governments have most of the time granted -sometimes substantial - discounts when privatisating state assets. In average this discount has been higher under more right wing governments, and in more unequal countries. We present a simple political economy model of...