The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the rise in liquidity in recent years has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets. If strong linkages exist, the...

To date, empirical investigations of trade liberalization under the conditions of increasing returns to scale (IRS) and imperfect competition (IC) have either assumed or imposed the market and productive structures necessary for such a model. However, of the recent IRS/IC models used to simulate...

This paper describes a moments estimator for a standard state-space model with coefficients generated by a random walk. A penalized least squares estimation is linked to the GLS (Aitken) estimates of the corresponding linear model with time-invariant parameters. The VC estimates are moments...

The recent increase in the minimum wage in Romania in early May 2016 represented a popular topic at the national level, which indicated that aggressive increases in the minimum wage could create a competitiveness problem in the context of a relatively high level of informal economic activities....

This paper analyzes wage decomposition methodology in the context of panel data sample selection embedded in a correlated random effects setting. Identification issues unique to panel data are examined for their implications for wage decompositions. As an empirical example, we apply our...

This paper estimates ordered logit and probit regression models for bank ratings which also include a country index to capture country-specific variation. The empirical findings provide support to the hypothesis that the individual international bank ratings assigned by Fitch Ratings are...

We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We...

A strong private equity market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in private equity across European countries. We investigate the macro-determinants of private equity...

This paper explores the stability of the relation between money demand for M3 and inflation in the euro area by including the recent period of the financial crisis. Evidence is based on a cointegration analysis, where inflation and asset prices are allowed to enter the long run relationship. By...

Parental leave and subsidized child care are prominent examples of family policies supporting the reconciliation of family life and labor market careers for mothers. In this paper, we combine different empirical strategies to evaluate the employment effects of these policies for mothers in...