This paper presents an extensive analysis on the means of payment that consumers in Malta use to purchase different goods and services. The aim of this study is to shed light on consumers' payment behaviour and in particular to improve the understanding of the considerations that shape...

The paper applies two commonly used methods in the literature to estimate the shadow economy in Malta, the Currency Demand Approach and the Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model. Given the unobservable nature of the shadow economy, estimates are surrounded by a considerable degree of...

In recent years the housing market in Malta has been characterised by significant demand and supply developments reflecting strong economic and population growth. While the determinants of house prices in Malta have long been studied and documented, much less is known about private sector rents,...

We extend the Central Bank of Malta's core DSGE model - MEDSEA - with housing and financial frictions to capture the important theoretical links betweeen house prices, credit and consumption. The model features a rich set of features that are inherent to small open economies in a monetary union....

This paper compares the main findings from the third wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) for Malta with those for the euro area. This comparative report finds that in 2016 the median Maltese household held more real and financial assets than households in the euro area....

Over the recent years Malta has experienced a remarkable increase in its labour force due to a large influx of immigrants and an unprecedented increase in the domestic participation. Driven by the observation of such a phenomenon, this paper aims at assessing the impact of foreign and domestic...

In this paper we propose a SVAR identification strategy to disentangle two housing demand shocks and their ensuing effect on consumption. This builds on the literature studying the role of the collateral and housing wealth effects on household behaviour. A mix of zero and sign restrictions...

This paper proposes a sectoral extension to STREAM, the Bank's main macroeconometric model. The extension documented in this paper borrows heavily from linking integration strategies prevalent in literature. The approach utilised here however, differs in two main ways when compared to existing...

Malta's path of economic development benefited from international trade, as the country is situated on trade routes linking Europe, Africa and Asia. This paper aims to look at the country's location, trade agreements, cultural attributes and size in a gravity model framework. Its almost 50 year...

This paper makes use of a novel dataset derived from mortgage contracts granted by the major lending institutions in Malta. This contains information about house prices and a number of important property characteristics. Together with geographic and sociodemographic variables, this information...