The twentieth volume of the Journal of Government and Economics (JGE) was released in the winter of 2025, with articles exploring a variety of topics in the emerging field of government and economics. Miroslav Mateev investigates how market competition and ownership concentration influence bank performance in the MENA region, focusing in on the role of government in shaping these relationships. Yanina Bajaña-Villagómez and Freddy García-Albán revisit the fiscal return to public investment using a present-value self-financing criterion for revenue-constrained oil-exporting economies. Pablo Muylle and Emmanuel Dhyne make use of Belgian business-to-business transaction data to measure the indirect footprint of SOEs beyond the public sector via commercial linkages to private firms. Rafael Acevedo and Jorge Romero-Habeych investigate whether the effects of US monetary policy shocks on housing prices are shaped by state-level institutional quality, as measured by economic freedom.

The role of government in shaping market competition and ownership structure in the banking industry: substitutes or complements?

Miroslav Mateev

Testing self-financing public investment: Evidence from an oil-exporting economy

Yanina Bajaña-Villagómez, Freddy García-Albán

Measuring the indirect footprint of state ownership in private supply chains: Evidence from Belgian firm-to-firm transaction data

Pablo Muylle, Emmanuel Dhyne

When institutions intervene: Economic freedom and the uneven transmission of monetary policy into U.S. housing markets

Rafael Acevedo, Jorge Romero-Habeych