We used a recursive modeling approach to study whether investors could, in real time, have used information on the comovement of stock markets to forecast stock returns in European stock markets for high-technology firms. We used weekly data on returns in the Neuer Markt, the Nouveau Marché,...

In Great Britain several policy measures have been implemented in order to increase energy efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions. In the domestic sector, these targets can be achieved by improving space heating efficiency and, hence, decrease heating expenditures. However, before...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should – ceteris paribus – become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

A contingent claims valuation model which allows to highlight the implications of program trading in spot markets for the pricing of European-style foreign currency options and for the volatility strike structure implicit in these contracts is devoloped. The curvature of the volatility strike...

This paper focuses on the role of absorptive capacity in determining whether or not domestic firms benefit from productivity spillovers from FDI using establishment level data for the UK. We allow for different effects of FDI on establishments located at different quantiles of the productivity...

The process of European integration has gained considerable momentum during the past couple of years. This paper provides an assessment of the degree of integration of both the accession states of central and eastern Europe and of the pre-ins for monetary union with respect to Germany. Using...

The paper is about the economically efficient design of financial transfers to the unemployed in a highly industrialized country. There have been quite a few contributions to this problem — for example by Beenstock/Brasse, Feldstein/ Altman, Grubel, Orzag/Snower — which are presented and...

Comparing the unemployment insurance systems of the United States and of the United Kingdom it is shown that the US unemployment insurance (UI) is the only system that provides for a negative feedback between UI expenditures and layoffs (“experience rating”). The UK has no specific UI:...