A high degree of cyclical synchronization between central and east European countries (CEECs) and the euro area is generally seen as a prerequisite for successful EMU enlargement. This paper investigates comovements between CEECs and the euro area. We first establish stylized facts on economic...

This paper investigates how the dynamic adjustment of the European overnight rate Eonia to the term spread and the ECB’s policy rate has been affected by rate expectations and the operational framework of the ECB. In line with recent evidence found for the US and Japan, the reaction of the...

This paper presents original evidence on price setting in the euro area at the individual level. We use micro data on consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI) prices, as well as survey information. Our main findings are: (i) prices in the euro area are sticky and more so than in the US; (ii) there is...

Foreign direct investment is of increasing importance in the European Union. This paper estimates the effect of taxes on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and on three sub-components of these flows for the countries of the en- larged European Union. The model in the spirit of gravity...

We disentangle different driving factors of sovereign bond market integration by studying yield co-movements of EMU countries, the UK, the US and 16 German Länder in the last 15 years. At a low frequency of weeks, bond market integration has increased gradually in the course of the last 15...

In this paper we investigate the interaction between a credit portfolio and another risk type, which can be thought of as market risk. Combining Merton-like factor models for credit risk with linear factor models for market risk, we analytically calculate their interrisk correlation and show how...

Inflation differentials within European Monetary Union (EMU) are increasingly seen as exerting adverse effects on the price competitiveness of member countries’ firms and given the common monetary policy within EMU as being detrimental to euro-area economies, in particular to those with...

This paper addresses the relative importance of monetary indicators for forecasting inflation in the euro area in a Bayesian framework. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA)based on predictive likelihoods provides a framework that allows for the estimation of inclusion probabilities of a particular...

A joint model of macroeconomic and term structure dynamics is specified and estimated for the euro area. The model comprises a backward-looking Phillips curve, a dynamic IS equation, a monetary policy rule as well as a specification of the dynamics of trend growth and the natural real interest...

The paper analyses the performance of simple interest rate rules which feature a response to noisy observations of inflation, output and money growth. The analysis is based on a small empirical model of the hybrid New Keynesian type which has been estimated on euro area data by Stracca (2007)....