A country’s form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead societies to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

In this paper, the evidence collected in the large literature on testing for Granger-causality from money to output is re-visited. Using a broad data base of 14 EU-countries plus Canada, the U.S. and Japan, and quarterly data from the mid-60s to the mid-90s, a number of hypotheses from this...

In this paper, the evidence collected in the large literature on testing for Granger-causality from money to output is re-visited. Using a broad data base of 14 EU-countries plus Canada, the US and Japan, and quarterly data from the mid 60s to the mid 90s, a number of hypotheses from this...

A high degree of de facto judicial independence (JI) functions as a crucial precondition of governments to credibly commit to legislative decisions, such as respecting private property rights. Thus, de facto JI should improve the allocative efficiency and may therefore contribute positively to...

In this paper, we study the determinants of daily spreads for emerging market sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) over the period April 2002–December 2011. Using GARCH models, we find, first, that daily CDS spreads for emerging market sovereigns are more related to global and regional risk...

This paper studies the factors driving changes in judicial independence (JI) as incorporated in constitutions. Two indicators of constitutionally safeguarded JI are constructed. Variations in these indicators are identified based on changes in the constitutions of as many as 100 countries that...