The purpose of this paper is to explain the relation between the Border Effect and industrial concentration. This is achieved by founding this relation on the Home Market Effect and testing the robustness of this foundation through an application to the European Single Market. A sectorial...

We examine the degree of market power in the big four countries of the euro area using macro and firm micro data. We focus on three main indicators of market power in and across countries: namely, the concentration ratios, the markup and the degree of economic dynamism. For the macro database we...

We examine the degree of market power in the big four countries of the euro area using macro and firm-micro data. We focus on three main indicators of market power in and across countries: namely, the concentration ratios, the markup and the degree of economic dynamism. For the macro database we...

This paper studies the bilateral drivers of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between European banks. Two findings document that banks use M&A as a device to leverage their expertise rather than to diversify. (i) Following the literature on matrimonial matching by using a binary logit model, the...

Increasing fragmentation of production across borders is changing the nature of international competition. As a result, conventional indicators of competitiveness based on gross exports become less informative and new measures are needed. In this paper we propose an ex-post accounting framework...

Lobbying can provide policy makers with important sector-specific information and thereby facilitating informed decisions. If going far beyond this, in particular if successfully influencing policy makers to unnecessarily tighten regulation or not opening already excessively regulated markets,...

This paper illustrates the main features of the Labour Module of the CompNet dataset which provides indicators of firm growth over the period 1995-2012 across 17 EU (13 euro area) countries and 9 macro-sectors. It also includes information on a large set of micro-aggregated characteristics of...

In this paper, we develop an analytical framework for conducting forward-looking assessments of profitability and solvency of the main euro area insurance sectors. We model the balance sheet of an insurance company encompassing both life and non-life business and we calibrate it using country...