Using a newly developed database for 8 transition economies, this paper examines whether reforms and political freedom are important for foreign bank entry. The paper provides strong evidence that foreign bank entry positively responds to reform measures. We also find some evidence for the...

Applying a spatial competition model to banking, we analyze the effects of the choice of a monetary policy rule by the central bank on banks' market power as measured by the Lerner index. We show that a procyclical monetary policy may reinforce the countercyclical movement of the Lerner index....

In this paper we analyze how the choice between "clean" and "polluting" consumer goods affects environmental quality in an overlapping generations model. Consumers can choose between two, from a consumption perspective identical goods. However, one is produced in an environmentally friendly...

This paper analyzes adjustments in the Dutch retail gasoline prices. We estimate an error correction model on changes in the daily retail price for gasoline (taxes excluded) for the period 1996-2004 taking care of volatility clustering by estimating an EGARCH model. It turns out the volatility...

We develop an empirical discrete choice interaction model with a finite number of agents. We characterize its equilibrium properties - in particular the correspondence between the interaction strength, the number of agents, and the set of equilibria - and propose to estimate the model by means...

Abstract In a great majority of countries throughout the world productive government services have declined as percentage of GDP since the 1970s. In the macroeconomic literature this is often associated with the general productivity growth decline, suggesting an important role for infrastructure...

The surge in labour productivity growth in the United States in the late 1990s has prompted much speculation about the capacity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to structurally increase growth. The simultaneous slowdown in productivity growth in the EU suggests the European...

Belgium and The Netherlands share a lot of common characteristics in historical development, geographical location, political and institutional structure and in the size and degree of the openness of their economies. However, detailed comparisons of economic development of Belgium and The...

Indicators of financial crisis generally do not have a good track record. This paper presents an early warning system for six countries in Asia, in which indicators do work.We distinguish three types of financial crises, currency crises, banking crises and debt crises, and extract four groups of...

Business cycle indexes are used to get a timely and frequent description of the state of the economy and its likely development in the near future. This paper discusses two methods for constructing business cycle indexes, the traditional NBER method and a recently developed dynamic factor model,...