Bergh, Andreas, Dackehag, Margareta, Rode, Martin, “Are OECD policy recommendations for public sector reform biased against welfare states? Evidence from a new database”, European Journal of Political Economy, 20 September Policy advice by the OECD has long been at the heart of academic debates on welfare state reform, with frequent claims questioning the ideological orientation of recommendations. This paper constructs an indicator of perceived reform need for 24 countries, quantifying the policy advice contained in …Read More

Bolton, Patrick, Freixas, Xavier, Gambacorta, Leonardo,  Mistrulli, Paolo Emilio, (2016), “Relationship and Transaction Lending in a Crisis”, The Review of Financial Studies, 7 June We study how relationship lending and transaction lending vary over the business cycle. We develop a model in which relationship banks gather information on their borrowers, allowing them to provide loans to profitable firms during a crisis. Because of the services they provide, operating costs of relationship banks are higher than those of …Read More

Alexandris Polomarkakis, Konstantinos, (2016), “The European VAT Oxymoron: A pragmatic solution for welfare, especially in times of crisis?”, Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 26 August VAT is an important but at the same time long neglected issue in social policy literature. The way in which taxes are levied has important implications for citizens in terms of equity and efficiency effects. Rate diversification is embedded in VAT planning across …Read More

Hatchondo, Juan Carlos, Martinez, Leonardo, Sosa-Padilla, César, (2016), “Debt Dilution and Sovereign Default Risk”, Journal of Political Economy, 31 August We measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and study debt covenants that could mitigate these effects. We calibrate a baseline model with endogenous debt duration and default risk (in which debt can be diluted) using data from Spain. We find that debt dilution accounts for 78 percent of the …Read More