We use the Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression (FAVAR) approach of Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (2005) to estimate the effects of monetary policy shocks on wages and employment in the euro area. The use of a large data set comprising country, sectoral and euro area-wide data allows us to...

In this paper, we investigate the claim that German banks are special compared to banks in other industrialised economies. We show that banks are of particular importance to the German economy?as financial intermediary, as lender to the corporate sector, and as part of the corporate governance...

The aim of this paper is to assess how German savings banks adjust capital and risk under capital regulation. We estimate a modified version of the model developed by Shrieves and Dahl (1992). In comparison to former research, we impose fewer restrictions with regard to the impact of regulation...

This paper attempts to evaluate the information content of money for the forecast of inflation, output, investment and consumption in the euro zone. It considers M1 and M3; a number of modifications to these aggregates is also proposed to enhance their forecast performance. The evaluation employs...

Using enterprise data for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS, this study examines the effects of corruption on productivity. Corruption is defined as a 'bribe tax' and is compared to another form of institutional inefficiency, which is often believed to be closely linked...

The paper discusses the relevance of past concerns about trade and foreign direct investment diversion to the detriment of Asian suppliers and hosts as a result of EU integration deepening and widening in the nineties. Based on recent empirical evidence, these concerns are rejected. As concerns...

This paper discusses the issue whether developing countries forego chances in world manufactured markets by protecting intermediate services against market entry of new suppliers. By scanning the empirical literature on effective rates of protection (ERP), the evidence is supportive. Yet, it...

The paper discusses similarities and differences between past EU binding internal liberalization „across the board“ in the industrial sector and present so-called voluntary sectoral liberalization of member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). While both approaches are...

While the EU is a customs union in merchandise trade (goods), it has not yet reached this stage of integration in service trade. How far the EU is from a customs union in service trade is very difficult to assess because of the nonquantitative nature of trade restrictions in this sector. The...

In this paper, we analyse effects of EU integration on Asian countries. Since the early 1990s, it is especially the trade creation effect of monetary integration (so-called Rose effect) which is heavily debated in the literature. Recent papers seem to indicate that the Rose effect seems to be...