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This paper analyses the economic confidence indicators' reaction to the environment surrounding the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using Eurostat's monthly data for the economic sentiment in European Union countries, we found that, in the COVID‐19 era, confidence and perceptions about the economy are strongly dominated by factors related to the pandemic, more so by policy measures and the vaccination process than by the direct health impact of the coronavirus. This is found to be prevalent across the multiple dimensions of economic sentiment. Moreover, standard macroeconomic variables seem to play a smaller and more marginal role during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bank depositors and creditors are expected to play an important role in banks' dividend policy since they can either discipline or incentivise managers to pay larger dividends. We provide evidence suggesting that depositors are more influential than subordinated debtholders in disciplining banks facing extreme solvency situations from wealth expropriation, which is consistent with the monitoring hypothesis. The results for solvent banks show that deposits and subordinated debt explain larger dividends, suggesting that signalling incentives drive these cash payments. Diving deeper into our groups of banks, we observe that the risk‐shifting hypothesis becomes more nuanced as listed banks exercise wealth expropriation after the crisis through the uninsured deposits channel. Our results provide significant support for major dividend theories, unravelling the debt channels through which these theories may hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of the political environment in the timing of financial crises over a sample of 85 countries during the period 1975–2017. We consider systemic banking, currency and sovereign debt crises in addition to twin and triple crises. Using a fixed‐effects logit model, this study shows that banking and currency crises are more likely to occur within 1 year after elections. There is also evidence that the probability of currency crises increases when right‐wing parties are in office. Moreover, time in office of incumbent chief executives reduces the likelihood of any type of financial crises. The incidence of twin and triple crises is lower when majority governments are in office. This study contributes to the literature by calling attention to the importance of some political factors for different types of financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses how economic freedom is affected by the ideological stance, being the first to analyse the role of dictatorial regimes and their ideological orientations. Using annual data for 145 countries over the period 2000‐2017 and a two‐step system GMM estimator, this study finds that democracies do promote more economic freedom than authoritarian regimes, but not in all circumstances The probability that economic liberalization is promoted is higher for right‐wing dictatorships than for other autocracies and comparable to other types of democratic ruling, with the exception of right‐wing democratic governments that strongly benefit liberalization. These right‐wing governments, alongside (the negative effect of) non‐right‐wing dictatorships, seem to be the main contributors to explaining why democracies in recent years are promoting more economic liberalization than autocracies. Additionally, our results suggest that democratic governments not ideologically identifiable seem to share a common dislike for policies that promote liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]