A key issue in development economics is the explanation of core-periphery patterns around the world. Combining this issue with that of analyzing unilateral transfers (e.g. foreign aid) points in the direction of the use of New Economic Geography (NEG) models which, so far, has not been done...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

In explaining the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, urban economics and new economic geography (NEG) dominate recent research in economics. A main difference between these two approaches is that NEG stresses the role of spatial linkages whereas urban economics does not do so. We...

This paper estimates a time-varying AR-GARCH model of inflation producing measures of inflation uncertainty for the euro area, and investigates the linkages between them in a VAR framework, also allowing for the possible impact of the policy regime change associated with the start of EMU in...

This paper examines the process of price discovery in the MTS system, which builds on the parallel quoting of euro-denominated government securities on a number of (relatively large) domestic markets and on a (relatively small) European marketplace (EuroMTS). Using twenty-seven months of daily...

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...