This paper examines whether European regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster and are more resilient to negative shocks than its less efficient peers. For this purpose, we measure a bank's intermediation quality by estimating its profit and cost efficiency...

We use a 3-step analysis to assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU27. Firstly, we perform the SURADF specific panel unit root test to investigate the meanreverting behaviour of general government expenditure and revenue ratios. Secondly, we apply the bootstrap panel cointegration...

We study fiscal behaviour and the sovereign yield curve in the U.S. and Germany in the period 1981:I-2009:IV. The latent factors, level, slope and curvature, obtained with the Kalman filter, are used in a VAR with macro and fiscal variables, controlling for financial stress conditions. In the...