We uncover technological standardization as a microeconomic mechanism which is vital for the implementation of new technologies, in particular general purpose technologies. The interdependencies of these technologies require common rules (“standardization”) to ensure compatibility. Using...

This paper investigates the sources of current account imbalances accumulated within the European Monetary Union before the Great Recession. First, it documents that starting in 1996, before the actual introduction of the euro, countries in the euro area periphery experienced increasing current...

We estimate a medium-scale DSGE model for the euro area in an open economy framework. The model includes structural trends on all variables, which allow us to estimate on gross data. We first provide a theoretical balanced growth path consistent with permanent productivity shocks, inflation...

Rapid credit growth in the EU new Member States, acceding and candidate countries has raised the issue of financial stability in the region. This rapid credit growth has been accompanied by the deterioration in the current account balance and the large-scale distribution of foreign currency...

This paper aims to complete our understanding of the relationship between changes in nominal effective exchange rates and prices in the new EU member states. We investigate the exchange rate pass-through to import, producer and consumer prices for ten Central and Eastern European countries with...

This paper analyses the role of credit rating agencies in sovereign debt crises. Using a panel of 53 emerging and developing countries with annual data going back to 1977, the paper shows that credit ratings are not very good predictors of debt distress events once tested against a simple...

The article contributes to the literature on financial fragility, studying how macro-economic shocks affect supply and demand in the corporate debt market. We take into account the effect of the competitive environment, as well as the risk level, measured by companies' default rate. The model is...

The paper contributes to the literature on the convergence of financial systems in the euro area by estimating household credit demand in individual countries. Using the ARDL framework advocated notably by Pesaran et al. (1999), the paper provides evidence on the convergence of long run credit...

In order to provide medium run forecasts of headline and core HICP inflation for the euro area, we assess the usefulness of dynamic factor models. We use Stock and Watson's (1999) out-of-sample methodology for models estimated over the 1988:1-2002:3 period, with balanced and unbalanced panels....

The paper implements a consistent empirical strategy in order to investigate the behaviour of the markup over the cycle and its contribution to inflation movements. We model the price series as I(2) components and use polynomial cointegration in order to recover a long-run price schedule. We do...