This paper analyzes European financial markets' comprehension and interpretation of ECB communication signals. By applying a novel indicator developed by Berger et al. (2006), that quantifies the contents of the ECB's introductory statements, we find that communication affects the term structure...

This paper estimates the pass-through and speed of adjustment of Italian regional interest rates to changes in the money market rate for the period 1998Q1-2009Q4. Our main findings suggest that the markup for the lending rates that banks charge are generally higher in the South than in the...

Economists and central bankers nowadays believe that forward guidance has become more important in a world in which key interest rates have hit their effective lower bounds (ELB). In case of the European Central Bank (ECB), this should have increased the informational content of the introductory...

The paper develops a theoretical model showing a mutual relationship between corruption and capital account restrictions. According to the model, higher corruption induces stricter restrictions and vice versa. We test the model using panel data for 112 countries over the period 1984-2002 and...

In this paper we document the asymmetric role that the U.S. stock market plays in the international predictability of excess stock returns during recession and expansion periods. Most of the positive evidence accrues during the periods of recessions in the United States. During the expansions...

The paper aims at a joint analysis of inter-firm and intra-firm diffusion of technology, taking as an example E-selling and E-purchasing. The analysis is based on an encompassing model of diffusion, drawn from the literature, which is extended by considering technology-specific obstacles and...

Using a large panel of quarterly firm survey data from 1984 to 2007, which allow changes in firms' prices to be linked to several firm-specific variables, this paper finds that state-dependent pricing is clearly important in a low inflation environment and that variables measuring the current...

In this paper we propose a straightforward method to derive a non-accelerating inflation capacity utilisation rate (NAICU) based on micro data. We condition the current capacity utilisation of firms on their current and planned price adjustments. The non-accelerating inflation capacity...

In this paper we develop a business cycle measure that can be shown to have excellent ex-ante forecasting properties for GDP growth. For identifying business cycle movements, we use a semantic approach. We infer nine different states of the economy directly from firms' responses in business...