In this paper we present an international cross-country benchmarking analysis for utility regulation of France and Germany, the two largest electricity distribution countries in Europe. We examine the relative performance of 99 French and 77 German distribution companies operating within two...

This study explores a new modelling approach that bridges the gap between multilateral country-level data and the bilateral-model based, goods-market specific purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis. Under this approach, PPP is embedded in latent common factors, extractable from a large set of...

In this paper we specify a multi-factor long-memory process that enables us to estimate the fractional differencing parameters at each frequency separately, and adopt this framework to model quarterly prices in three European countries (France, Italy and the UK). The empirical results suggest...

Survey-based indicators such as the consumer confidence are widely seen as leading indicators for economic activity, especially for the future path of private consumption. Although they receive high attention in the media, their forecasting power appears to be very limited. Therefore, this paper...