Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik (2005) found that a political regime change increases the probability of an economic growth acceleration. When we tried to replicate their results we discovered that these authors were led astray by a datadescription error in the Polity IV manual. When we correct...

This note examines whether financial markets have a disciplining effect on governments' financial policies. It is concluded that increasing interest burdens indeed lead to lower primary deficits. There is only weak evidence that the fiscal policy rules of the Maastricht Treaty reduced budget...

We test whether political instability affects central bank independence in developing countries. Both a legal measure and the turnover tate of central bank governors are used as proxies for central bank independence and the frequency of government transfers is used to proxy political...

This note presents new estimates of a probit model for the debt rescheduling, using a sample of 65 countries over the period 1984-93. Apart from economic variables, a whole range of indicators for political instability are included in the model as explanatory variables. It turns out, that none...

Studies on governance generally ignore spatial dependence among the observations. Employing spatial econometric methods, we find that governance in one country exhibits a positive relationship with governance in neighbouring countries. Consequently, a change in a single explanatory variable in a...

Using various indicators for economic freedom, it is shown that increases in economic freedom are robustly related to economic growth. This conclusion holds even if the impact of outlying observations is taken into account. The level of economic freedom is not related to growth.

The relationship between government debt and the maturity of government debt is analysed for eight OECD countries. It is found that the negative relationship between debt and effective maturity as reported by Missale and Blanchard (1994) for Ireland and Italy can also be found for some other...

Drawing on nationwide and representative survey data for the Netherlands, this article tests, first, to what degree economic subjects are aware of the level of both government debt and deficits, and, second, examines whether fiscal policy relates to individual saving decisions. The results...

This paper reviews arguments for central bank independence and presents new evidence on the impact of central bank (in)dependence on the level and variability of inflation, money growth, the level and financing of government budget deficits and economic growth, using three different measures of...