The present paper contributes to the research on the indicators that provide a warning of company failure by employing micro and macro variables within a framework of survival analysis using a sample of 0.4 million companies from the European Union (EU). The sensitivity of the results is checked...

The recent global financial turmoil increased bank interest spreads in Estonia to the highest levels recorded since the Russian crisis in 1998- 1999. The pure spread concept and the two-step estimation approach of Ho and Saunders (1981) have been used to decompose the interest spreads in...

This paper examines the determinants of firm sustainability in Estonia using discrete-time survival analysis with a complementary log-log hazard function. A firm is defined as sustainable if it meets the minimum capital requirement set by the law, and if it does not then it is described as being...

This paper considers the joint role of macro-economic and bankspecific factors in explaining the occurrence of banking problems in the twenty-one Central and East European emerging markets over the recent decade. Using data at the individual bank level we show, using a logit model, that the...

The opportunity cost approach suggesting a countervailing cyclical effect between R&D and short-term investments is the subject of theoretical and empirical debate. We extend the discussion by investigating the impact of demand fluctuations and credit constraints on firms' R&D in ten new EU...

The full implications of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 are yet to be revealed. The crucial question is whether a crisis of such severe magnitude will set \"cleansing mechanisms\" into motion as suggested by the opportunity cost argument of R&D, or rather destroy the long-term...

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating whether the cyclicality of R&D differs across countries with different levels of development. The paper uses micro-data from the World Bank/EBRD Business Environment and Enterprise Performance survey from 2001- 2007 and estimates...