This paper considers the nature and the distribution of trade and FDI effects of a potential enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) to the 10 countries that obtained EU membership in 2004. One-way and two-way error component gravity models are estimated using a data set of unbalanced...

This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA downgrade...

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currency to depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weighted combination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation, such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where the weights are their effectiveness....

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in 'Applied Financial Economics', 2011, 21, 95-116.<P> This paper documents the existence of large structural breaks in the unconditional correlations among the British pound, Norwegian krone, Swedish krona, Swiss franc, and euro exchange rates...</p>

This paper investigates whether there are bubbles in stock prices. We do this using a previously studied structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model claiming to distinguish fundamental and non-fundamental shocks to real stock prices. TheSVAR model relies on an identification restriction in...

Long-run restrictions have been used extensively for identifying structural shocks in vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. Such restrictions are typically just-identifying but can be checked by utilizing changes in volatility. This paper reviews and contrasts the volatility models that have...

Structural identification schemes are of essential importance to vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. This paper tests a commonly used structural parameter identification scheme to assess whether it can properly capture fundamental and non-fundamental shocks to stock prices. In particular, five...

Identification of shocks of interest is a central problem in structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) modelling. Identification is often achieved by imposing restrictions on the impact or long-run effects of shocks or by considering sign restrictions for the impulse responses. In a number of...

The Maastricht Treaty provided the blueprint for achieving Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as a further stage in the process of political and economic integration of the European Union (EU). In order to qualify to participate in EMU, Member States were required to achieve a high degree of...

Article 106 (ex 105 a) of the Treaty establishing the European Community maintains the historical tradition separating the issue of banknotes, for which the Central Bank is competent, and the issue of coins, which is the responsibility of the finance ministries. It is therefore for the European...