State-owned banks may help to soften the financing constraints of public sector entities and consequently become a factor that hampers fiscal discipline. Using a panel dataset, we find that a larger presence of state-owned banks in the banking system is associated with more credit to the public...

The monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area has been adversely affected by the recent crises. Using survey data on thousands of euro area firms, we study factors that affect the access to finance of SMEs. We find that changes in bank funding costs and borrower leverage matter for...

The effects of the adoption of the IMF's International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity Data Template on exchange rate volatility are investigated for 48 countries using panel data models and quarterly data from 1991 to 2005. In a model featuring significant relationships between nominal...

We study the effects of the inflation targets established for December of each year on the conduct of monetary policy. The hypothesis tested postulates that the annual inflation targets could have produced some seasonality in the operation of the overnight interbank funds market in which the...

The purpose of this paper is to explore and evaluate smooth approximation methods for value functions. These approximation methods are increasingly important in numerical dynamic programming since they allow researchers to solve models with a multitude of continuous state variables. In this...

Computing accurate estimates of total factor productivity (TFP) is important for testing economic theories as well as for designing efficient and effective economic policies. In this study we measure the dynamics of TFP in Slovenia by assuming a Cobb-Douglas production function and using the...

This article reviews Scilab, a free MATLAB-like programming system. Scilab can be used for data analysis and applied numerical work in both research and teaching. Scilab is an interesting alternative to some commercial programming environments. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based stochastic optimization technique. PSO is similar to optimization with Genetic Algorithms (GA). In PSO, the potential solutions (particles) move through the problem space by following the current optimum particles. Experience shows that PSO...