Providing the possibility to run personalised econometric/statistical analyses on the appropriate data sets by remote processing allows greater flexibility in the production of economic information. Binding confidentiality requirements are required with business survey data. The Bank of Italy's...

From a financial standpoint, the mechanics of the carry trade has been recently examined in Brunnermeier et al. (2009). They showed that shocks to interest rate differentials lead to carry trade activity and to significant reactions in the bilateral exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar that...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...

This paper analyzes the determinants of credit default swap spread changes for a large sample of US non-financial companies over the period between January 2002 and March 2009. In our analysis we use variables that the literature has found have an impact on CDS spreads and, in order to account...

Among the many controversial variables in finance, risk premia stand out for their lack of observability. Measuring premia as the difference between realized returns on risky and risk-free assets has not led to unanimous conclusions about their size, which greatly depends on the length of the...

This paper documents the existence of a significant forecast error on crude oil futures, particularly evident since the mid-1990s, which is negative on average and displays a non-trivial cyclical component (risk premium). We show that the forecast error on oil futures could have been explained...

This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...