We examine how the Bank of England’s quantitative easing (QE) policy during the global financial crisis affected the investment behaviour of insurance companies and pension funds and whether their behaviour was consistent with the operation of the so-called 'portfolio balance channel' that has...

In our analysis, we examine the convergence of all recent ten European Union (EU) members to EU standards. Novel features of the paper include more complete measures of convergence, in particular fiscal convergence; a broader examination of inflation convergence with respect to the Maastricht...

We examine the effect of remittance outflows on inflation in the remitting countries. The growth of remittance outflows depresses inflation rate.

We assess government solvency in the European Monetary Union (EMU), controlling for the interaction of fiscal policy with financial markets. We find a positive interaction, reflecting market-based pressures for fiscal improvement, and significant debt stabilization efforts, weakened in the...

This study brings new evidence on the relationship between openness and inflation. We estimate the impact of globalization on inflation in both developed and developing countries, and going further for different regional clusters. The results show that increased openness has without doubt the...

Can foreign direct investment (FDI) promote growth in Africa? What does the inflow of investment hold for African emerging economies? Are the determinants of FDI different for different regional blocs in Africa? This study reviews the implication of FDI for different regional blocs in Africa....

Has macroeconomic management succeeded in making privatization promote growth in Africa? What are the probable strategies that should accompany the privatization reform process to promote growth in Africa? To what extent has the privatization process succeeded in attracting foreign direct...

This paper analyses the link between forthcoming EU enlargement and selected aspects of EU institutional reforms, namely decision making rules in the European Central Bank and the status of the Eurogroup. It argues that some earlier arguments calling for urgent ECB reform are based on...

The authors assess the effects of central bank governor appointments on financial market expectations of monetary policy. To measure these effects, they assemble a new dataset of appointment announcements from 15 industrialized countries and conduct an event-study analysis on exchange rates,...

Investors and regulators often treat agency and Treasury debt as substitutes. To evaluate the extent to which this is appropriate, we study the portion of offering yield spreads over Treasury yields not explained by standard issue and issuer characteristics for Government Sponsored Enterprise...