Endogenous Constitutions: Politics and Politicians Matter, Economic Outcomes Don’t

We study changes in the form of government as an example of endogenously determined constitutions. For a sample of 202 countries over the period 1950-2006, we find that most changes are relatively small and roughly equally likely to be either in the direction of more parliamentarian or more presidential systems. Based on a fixed effects ordered logit panel data model estimated over the period 1951-2000 for 146 countries, we find that such changes in the constitution can be explained by characteristics of the political system, internal and external political conflicts, and political leaders, whereas economic and socio-demographic variables do not matter

The People's Republic of China's Growth, Stability, and Use of International Reserves

In the run-up to the financial crisis, the world economy was characterized by large and growing current account imbalances. Since the onset of the crisis, the People's Republic of China and the United States have rebalanced. As a share of gross domestic product, their current account imbalances are now less than half their pre-crisis levels. For the People's Republic of China, the reduction in its current account surplus post-crisis suggests a structural change. Panel regressions for a sample of almost 100 economies over the thirty-year period, 1983 - 2013, confirm that the relationship between current account balances and economic variables such as performance, structure, wealth, and the exchange rate, changed in important ways after the financial crisis

The Euro Area Crisis Five Years After the Original Sin

Why did Europe fail to manage the euro area crisis and what lessons can be drawn from this failure for Europe"s future? Studying the EU / IMF program that was imposed on Greece in May 2010 – the original sin of the crisis – highlights both the nature of the problem and the difficulty in resolving it. The mismanagement can be traced to the flawed political structure of the euro area that permitted governments of some member states to exploit problems in other member states that share the common currency. Undue influence of key euro area governments compromised the IMF"s role to the detriment of other member states and the euro area as a whole. Rather than help Greece, the May 2010 program was designed to protect specific political and financial interests in other member states. The ease with which the euro was exploited to shift losses from one member state to another and the absence of a corrective mechanism render the current framework unsustainable. In its current form, the euro poses a threat to the European project

Technology Diffusion within Central Banking: The Case of Real-Time Gross Settlement

We examine the diffusion of the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) technology across the world’s 174 central banks. RTGS reduces settlement risk and facilitates financial innovation in, for example, the settlement of foreign exchange trades. In 1985 only three central banks had implemented RTGS systems; by year-end 2006 that number had increased to ninetythree. We find that the RTGS diffusion process is consistent with a standard S-shaped curve. Real GDP per capita, the relative price of capital, and trade patterns explain a significant part of the cross-country variation in RTGS adoption. These determinants are remarkably similar to those that seem to drive cross-country adoption patterns of other technologies. JEL Codes: C72, E58. 1