It is our natural inclination to find stable patterns and meaning in the chaotic world around us. This assists in our efforts to understand the past and forecast the future. The starting point of this essay is the phrase "dismal science" which is an often used 'epitheton ornans' of economics....

The aim of this research was to identify determinants of the employment protection legislation reforms in the global perspective. The study was based on the Labor Freedom index published by the Heritage Foundation, which allowed to include 179 countries in the research that were observed in the...

In this paper I aim to try defining New Political Economy (NEP) as the economic study of politics, with a macroeconomic focus. It emerged from the influences mainly from the criticism of theory of economic policy, political business cycle research, public choice theory and new institutional...

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but richer voters are on average best informed. We develop a model where the voting mistakes resulting from low political knowledge reduce the weight of poor voters, and cause parties to choose political platforms that are better aligned...

This paper provides evidence on private standards on genetically modified (GM) organisms for 44 retailers operating in 54 countries, distinguishing between retailers not using GM ingredients, and retailers using ingredients which are potentially GM in private label products. Using this...

Using a political economy approach, this paper sheds light on how two factors – central bankers' preferences and the central bank's design – progressively assumed a crucial role in the evolution of monetary policy economics in the last four decades. The two factors jointly identify the...

This paper builds a model of populism called Democratic Rioting in which citizens – i.e. the poor and the rich - are assumed to be heavily influenced by psychological group dynamics that result from banking shocks. We highlight a display of anger that is channelled through an election instead...

The aim of this paper is to review the historical development of monetary policy theory since the 1980s using as focal point the nexus among central bank governance, central banker preferences and monetary policy effectiveness. Assuming a positive perspective the review highlights three...