We investigate the behavior of consumer confidence around national elections in the EU-15 countries during 1985:1-2007:3. Consumer confidence increases before the date of elections and falls subsequently by almost the same amount. It is able to predict the strength of the performance of the...

An event study analysis is performed on consumer confidence around election times using an effective sample of 84 national elections from 1985 through 2005 in the EU-15 countries. Consumer confidence is measured monthly using identical surveys, which began in 1985 and were gradually adopted by...

The general price level does not provide a sensitive indicator of whether monetary policy is tight or loose, because mostprices are sticky. Interest rates are free to move, but they are an ambiguous indicator of monetary policy: one does not know whether changes in the interest rate are due to...

The recent US Real Estate Bubble had consequences not only for the real economy but for the stock market as well. Real Estate Investment Trusts' (REITS) prices reached levels which could not be supported by their fundamentals until mid-2007. Using this observation as a starting point we examine...

We use textual analysis to construct an index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) for Greece from 1/1998 to 12/2017, similar to other international EPU indices. We also construct indices of political uncertainty (POLU) and economic uncertainty (EU), plus EPU sub-indices related to fiscal policy...

We present evidence that the predictive ability of the yield spread for short-run inflation is related to its predictive ability for economic activity. In particular, an increase in the slope of the term structure predicts an increase in output growth and a decrease in inflation of equal...

The advent of the single currency within the European Union provides a natural experiment to measure how the cost of equity changes as globalization takes place. This is because the launch of the single currency has led to the elimination of currency-related restrictions on the composition of...

The paper examines whether or not the convergence of European economies towards Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the launch of the single currency leads to an increase in stock market integration through a reduction in investment barriers. We estimate a conditional asset pricing model,...

In this paper, we find that firms with low (high) accruals experience positive (negative) abnormal returns only when they are characterized by high (low) value/growth measures (book to market ratio and free cash flow yield). The level of accruals of those firms is found to be attributable to...