Using an extended data set of EU countries ranging from 1971-2006 and relevant econometric methods, we investigate the economic, political, and institutional determinants of government deficits in the EU. The results show a strong opportunistic behaviour of policymakers which leads to political...

This paper studies the causes of price dispersion in the euro area emerging in response to a shock that hits all member countries symmetrically. We use a panel VAR model which is estimated over the period 1996 - 2007 to generate impulse responses of a range of price and wage variables to an oil...

This paper develops a specification of the credit scoring model with high discriminatory power to analyze data on loans at the retail banking market. Parametric and non- parametric approaches are employed to produce three models using logistic regression (parametric) and one model using...

This paper examines the process of price discovery in the MTS system, which builds on the parallel quoting of euro-denominated government securities on a number of (relatively large) domestic markets and on a (relatively small) European marketplace (EuroMTS). Using twenty-seven months of daily...

This paper uses the European Commission's Consumer Survey to assess whether inflation expectations have converged and whether inflation uncertainty has diminished following the introduction of the Euro in Europe. Consumers' responses to the survey suggest that inflation expectations depend more...

We assess the role of national fiscal policies, as automatic stabilizers, within a monetary union. We use a two-country New Keynesian DGE model which incorporates non-Ricardian consumers (as in Galì et al. 2004) and a home bias in the composition of national consumption bundles. We find that...

We review the literature on business cycle correlation between the euro area and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention as the newest EU members approach monetary union. Our meta-analysis of 35 identified publications suggests some CEECs already...

We provide evidence on the fit of the hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve for selected euro zone countries, the US and the UK. Instead of imposing rational expectations and estimating the Phillips curve by the Generalized Method of Moments, we follow Roberts (1997) and Adam and Padula (2003) and...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...

Distance related variables typically vary in a cross-section dimension but less so in a time dimension across cities, regions, or countries. The enlargement of the EU or the introduction of the euro, however, can be looked upon as integration shocks that are informative of the consequences of...