This paper provides an overview of the most important structured finance instruments in the context of the development of the financial turmoil that started in the third quarter of 2007 and continued into 2008. These financial market tensions were triggered by concerns about exposures of...

In spite of the conspicuous use of the Internet as a delivery channel, there is a relative dearth of empirical studies that provide a quantitative analysis of the impact of the Internet on banks´ financial performance. This paper attempts to fill this gap by identifying and estimating the...

This paper examines whether financial constraints affect firms’ investment decisions for older (larger) firms. We compare a group of unbanked firms to firms that rely on formal financing. Specifically, we combine data from the Spanish Mercantile Registry and the Bank of Spain Credit Registry...

Changes in sovereign ratings are strongly asymmetric, as downgrades tend to be deeper and faster than upgrades. In other words, once a country loses its initial status it takes a long time to recover it. Using S&P data, we characterise “rating cycles” in terms of their duration and...

This article analyses changes in the occupational employment share in Spain for the period 1997-2012 and the way particular sociodemographics adapt to those changes. There seems to be clear evidence of employment polarisation between 1997 and 2012, which accelerates over the recession. Changes...

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, we characterize de Fed's systematic response to technology shocks and its implications for US output, hours and inflation. Second we evaluate the extent to which that responses can be accounted for by a simple monetary policy rule in the...

This paper uses a well-established growth accounting framework to measure the contribution of ICT goods (considered as capital inputs) to output and labour productivity growth in the Spanish economy. We apply this framework to a sample of around 1300 Spanish firms per year over the period...

We analyze the effects of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks on hours worked and unemployment. We characterize the response of unemployment in terms of job separation and job finding rates. We find that job separation rates mainly account for the impact response of unemployment...

This paper presents a model analyzing the potential for an International Court with powers to declare standstills to mitigate the coordination problem inherent to roll-overs in sovereign debt markets. It is shown that, regardless of the quality of the information handled by such an Institution,...

Taking advantage of a rich database of more than 1 million companies in Spain, France and the U.K., we propose and test a hypothesis to explain why Spain has one of the world’s lowest business bankruptcy rates, even during the current economic crisis and after controlling for market exit...