This study explores the prevalence and nature of the regional divide for the Mexican manufacturing production across sub-national regions. We utilize a unique panel of municipality-level data from the manufacturing sector. An important contribution is the use of different panel methods to...

This paper analyses trade specialisation dynamics in two Eastern European countries (Romania and Bulgaria - EEC-2) vis-à-vis the core EU member states (EU-15) over the period 1990-2006. Specifically, we focus on whether there is a shift towards intra-industry trade leading to economic...

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are the most popular U.S. state-level policies for promoting deployment of renewable electricity (RES-E). While several econometric studies have estimated the effect of RPS on in-state RES-E deployment, results are contradictory. We reconcile these studies and...

We quantify the causal link between exchange rate movements and sovereign risk of 16 major emerging market economies (EMEs) by means of structural vector autoregressive models (SVARs) using data from 10/2004 through 12/2016. We apply a novel data based identification approach of the structural...

Macroprudential policies for financial institutions have received increasing prominence since the global financial crisis. These policies are often aimed at the commercial banking sector, while a host of other non-bank financial institutions, or shadow banks, may not fall under their...

This paper shows that politicians' pressure to climb the career ladder increases bank risk exposure in their region. Chinese local politicians are set growth targets in their region that are relative to each other. Growth is stimulated by debt-financed programs which are mainly financed via bank...

Since the turn of the millennium the problem of credibility of the social security system has spread to the private pension funds sector. This is evident for those countries, like Australia and Iceland, that have very large funded pensions assets as a result of strong pension reforms. The...

This paper evaluates the Morningstar mutual fund ranking system. We find that indeed higher Morningstar ratings are associated with higher returns on the portfolios including respectively five-, four-, three-, two- and one-star funds only (STAR5 to STAR1). We then perform an unconditional and...

This study assesses the relative performance of Greek equity funds employing a non-parametric method, specifically Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Using an original sample of cost and operational attributes we explore the effect of each variable on funds' operational efficiency for an...