The paper offers theoretical and empirical insights into the links between banks and firms in industrial districts and to the way investment is financed. Theoretically, it is assumed that district-banking localism is embedded in the industrial districts� social context. District banks...

Quantitative information on the current state of the economy is crucial to economic policy-making, but the quarterly national accounts data for GDP in the euro area are released with a significant delay. This paper presents alternative models for the real-time forecasting of euro area GDP and...

We present tools for real-time detection of turning points in the industrial production growth-cycle of the euro area and its four largest economies. In particular, we apply a multivariate hidden Markov model to national survey results � i.e. to the earliest information about current...