Coherence of output gaps in the euro area: The impact of the COVID-19 shock.

Using the measures proposed by Mink et al. (2012), we reexamine the coherence of business cycles in the euro area using a long sample period. We also analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business cycle coherence and examine whether our measures for business cycle coherence indicate a core versus periphery within EMU.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected public trust? Evidence for the US and the Netherlands.

Using two large-scale surveys among households, we examine the drivers of public trust in banks, insurance companies, BigTechs, and other people in the United States and the Netherlands, and analyse whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected public trust. Our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic did not have much effect on trust in financial institutions in the US and the Netherlands. However, trust in BigTechs and trust in other people declined in both countries, especially in the US.

Effects of monetary policy announcements on term premia in the euro area during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We study the effects of the announcement of the ECB's Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) on ten-year government bond term premia in eleven euro-area countries, while controlling for other ECB statements. We find that the term premia of government bonds in euro area countries with higher sovereign risk, as measured by sovereign CDS spreads, decreased more in response to the announcement of the PEPP. This occurred after these term premia had risen in response to a prior monetary policy press conference statement by the ECB president that the ECB was "not here to close spreads".

Political Regime and Human Capital: A Cross-Country Analysis.

We examine the relationship between different dimensions of the political regime in place and human capital using a two-step structural equation model. In the first step, we employ factor analysis on 16 human capital indicators to construct two new human capital measures (basic and advanced human capital). In the second step, we estimate the impact of our political variables on human capital, using a cross-sectional structural model for some 100 countries.

Measuring Health: A Multivariate Approach.

We examined the health status of 171 countries by employing factor analysis on various national health indicators for the period 2000-2005 to construct two new measures on health. The first measure is based on the health of individuals and the second on (the quality of) the health services. Our measures differ substantially from indicators used in previous studies on health and also lead to different rankings of countries.

Is the political system really related to health?

We analyze whether the political system and its stability are related to cross-country differences in health. We apply factor analysis on various national health indicators for a large sample of countries over the period 2000-2005 and use the outcomes of the factor analysis to construct two new health measures, i.e.