If voters of different countries adhere to different and deeply rooted cultural norms, when these countries interact their leaders may find it impossible to agree on effi cient policies especially in hard times. Political leaders’actions are bound by a “conformity constraint”that requires them to express policies that do not violate these norms. This inhibits politicians from adopting the optim...

What determines the sustainability of sovereign debt? In this paper, we develop a model where myopic governments seek electoral popularity but can nevertheless commit credibly to service external debt. They do not default when they are poor even though default costs are low because they would lose access to debt markets and be forced to reduce spending; they do not default when they become rich...

This paper investigates the interdependence of US dollar exchange rates expressed in other major currencies. Focusing on different phases of the Global financial crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis (ESDC), we adopt a dynamic conditional correlation model into a multivariate Fractionally Integrated Asymmetric Power ARCH (FIAPARCH) framework, during the period 2004–2011. The findi...

This paper assesses the role of sovereign risk in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations in Turkey. We estimate two versions of a simple New Keynesian small open economy model on quarterly data for the period 1994Q3-2008Q2: A basic version and a version augmented by a default premium on government debt due to a perceived risk of sovereign debt default. Model comparisons clearly support the augme...

 The swell in government spending threatens to diminish long term growth potential in many nations. Our study of 37 countries reveals how enlarged government spending meaningfully dents the efficiency of investment and potential for future growth.  In response to the financial crisis, Greece, the UK, and Spain implemented the loosest fiscal policies during the 2008-2010 period, among 37 natio...