This paper examines the impact of bank ownership concentration on two indicators of bank riskiness, namely banks' non-performing loans and capital adequacy. Using balance sheet information for around 500 commercial banks from more than 50 countries averaged over 2005-2007, we find that...

We examine the role of money in the policies of the ECB, using introductory statements of the ECB President at the monthly press conferences during 1999-2004. Over time, the relative amount of words devoted to the monetary analysis has decreased. Our analysis of indicators of the monetary policy...

We employ a rich sample of individual tax returns data to simulate alternatives to the income tax reform introduced in Germany by the governmental coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in 1998. We characterize three reforms that would have been fiscally equivalent to the actual one: a...

This paper analyses the role of partisan politics in determining the local tax burden. Property taxes are the most important revenue source which municipalities in the Netherlands can decide upon themselves. Using a new data set on Dutch local property taxes in 1996, it is concluded that...

In this paper seven hypotheses to explain variation in central bank independence across countries are tested. The predictions based upon the theory that delegation of authority by politicians to the central bank is used as a commitment device are not supported: central bank independence is not...

This paper re-examines the relationship between trade intensity and business cycle synchronization for 21 OECD countries in the period 1970-2003. Instead of using instrumental variables, we estimate a multivariate model including variables capturing specialization and similarity of economic...