This analysis tests the price discovery relationship between sovereign CDS premia and bond yield spreads on the same reference entity. The theoretical no-arbitrage relationship between the two credit spreads is confronted with daily data from six Euro-area countries over the period 2004-2011. As...

We examine the evolution of the Icelandic banking sector in its macroeconomic environment. The story culminates in the crisis of October 2008, when all three major banks in Iceland collapsed in three successive days. The country is still struggling to cope with the consequences. The paper...

Is the pricing of sovereign risk linear during bearish episodes? Or can initial shocks on economic fundamentals be exacerbated by endogenous factors that create nonlinearities? We test for nonlinearities in the sovereign bond market of European peripheral countries during the debt crisis and...

We examine Iceland’s capital controls, which were imposed in October 2008 in order to prevent massive capital flight and a complete collapse of the exchange rate. The controls have not been lifted yet, primarily because of the risk of outflows of domestic holdings of the failed cross-border...

The introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999 created the conditions for an integrated government bond market in the euro area. Using a unique data set from the electronic trading platform Euro-MTS, we consider what is the ‘benchmark’ in this market. We develop and apply two definitions of...

According to more recent theories on the optimal capital structure, the availability of external financing is not always guaranteed, or it may come at different costs, depending on the methods of financing used (debt vs. equity, long-term debt vs. short-term debt, etc.). Under such...

Foreign exchange reserve accumulation has risen dramatically in recent years. The introduction of the euro, greater liquidity in other major currencies, and the rising current account deficits and external debt of the United States have increased the pressure on central banks to diversify away...

This Paper analyses the issues raised by EMU for the relationships between the Euro area and the international financial system. The depreciation of the Euro exchange rate since the beginning of EMU has attracted most attention. The Paper argues that theory and the data support none of the...

The paper considers issues in recent research on macroeconomic equilibrium in centrally planned economies. I defend the explicit aggregative, macroeconomic approach in theory, institutional relationships and measurement. It has offered a fresh, coherent framework for the analysis of many...

Throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), there is a widespread failure of enterprise debtors to make scheduled payments of principal and interest to creditors, who in turn have strong incentives not to declare bankruptcy. In such circumstances, the price mechanism does not properly guide the...