The euro area financial system took excessive risks during the global credit boom, which in some countries led to an unsustainable increase in credit, higher asset prices and housing booms. This process helped to fuel large imbalances within the euro area. Banks played a key role in channelling...

The aim of this thesis is to analyze, from an empirical point of view, both the different varieties of economic and financial crises (typological analysis) and the context’s characteristics, which could be associated with a likely occurrence of such events. Consequently, we analyze both: years...

This paper proposes a new ‘World Volatility Index’, coined WVIX, by constructing the first index that approximates the aggregate volatility level of the G20 countries. The empirical analysis makes use of the factor dynamic conditional correlation model – with an automated methodology to...

Using the recent financial crisis as a natural quasi-experiment, we test whether and to what extent conservative accounting affects shareholder value. We find that there is significantly positive and economically meaningful relation between conservatism and firm stock performance during the...

The credit risk on the bond market is characterized by the possible default of a counterparty, but also by changes in the spread following a perceived deterioration, by the market, of the credit quality of the issuer. This thesis focuses on credit spreads on corporate bond market in euros....

Tracing the SEC ban on the short selling of financial stocks in September 2008, this paper investigates whether such selling activity before the 2008 short ban reflected financial companies’ risk exposures in the subprime crisis. The evidence suggests that short sellers sold short stocks that...

The research shows that banking relationships are important to lending. However, few studies focus on the banking relationships in syndicated loans, although these loans have became a major source of financing. The last financial crisis clearly shows the impacts of credit rationing and...

This study uses the current financial crisis as a quasi-experiment to examine whether and to what extent corporate boards affect the performance of firms. Using cumulative stock returns over the crisis to measure of firm performance, we find that board independence, as traditionally defined,...

In the wake of the Great Recession, a massive monetary policy stimulus was provided in the main OECD economies. It helped to stabilise financial markets and avoid deflation. Nonetheless, GDP growth has been sluggish and in some countries lower than expected given the measures taken, and...

This paper investigates the links between price returns for 25 commodities and stocks over the period from January 2001 to November 2011, by paying a particular attention to energy raw materials. Relying on the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) GARCH methodology, we show that the...