We analyze the determinants of the inflation trends in ten Southeast European (SEE) countries. Global cost-related factors and euro area (EA) inflation developments play an important role in explaining inflation dynamics in SEE countries. Changes in world food and energy prices, together with...

We propose a new algorithm which allows easy estimation of Vector Autoregressions (VARs) featuring asymmetric priors and time varying volatilities, even when the cross sectional dimension of the system N is particularly large. The algorithm is based on a simple triangularisation which allows to...

This paper investigates the relationship between energy intensity in the 12 countries of Eastern Europe that can be considered as in transition to a full market economy, and that of the present EU members. The raw data shows some evidence of convergence, and a carefully estimated econometric...

Integrated capital markets facilitate risk sharing across countries. Lower home bias in financial investments is an indicator of risk sharing. We highlight that existing indicators of equity home bias in the literature suffer from incomplete coverage because they consider only listed equities....

Recent developments in investment research have highlighted the importance of non-convexities and irreversibilities in the firms' adjustment of quasi-fixed inputs. However, aggregation across capital goods may smooth out the discontinuities associated with the adjustment of individual assets....

We propose the use of a three-level random intercept model to measure the degree of environmental policy performance of different countries and to study its determinants. Inspired by the literature on multilevel latent models and Item Response Theory (IRT), this framework treats policy...

In this paper we present and describe a large quarterly frequency, macroeconomic database. The data provided are closely modeled to that used in Stock and Watson (2012a). As in our previous work on FRED-MD, our goal is simply to provide a publicly available source of macroeconomic “big data”...

This paper attempts to empirically assess the impact of the ECB's quantitative easing policy on capital flows in the countries of the Central and South Eastern region. Given the tight trade and financial linkages of the region with the euro area, one should expect that the buoyant liquidity...

This paper assesses the impact of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis on the medium-term growth prospects of the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, which began an economic transition about two decades ago. We use cross-country growth regressions,...

The objective of this study is to provide some empirical evidences on the existence of labor market adjustments according to smooth adjustment hypothesis (SAH) under the impact of intra-industry trade (IIT) considering the Portuguese case over a time span between 1995 and 2006. The main...