I use a panel of semi-annual vintages of growth and fiscal forecasts of the European Commission, covering the period 1998:II-2008:II, to assess its effects on 10-year government yields for 14 EU countries. Results show that yields increase with better growth forecasts and with decreases in...

Regressing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) output efficiency scores on nondiscretionary variables, with a two-stage DEA/Tobit and bootstrap procedures, we show that health inefficiency in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is related to Gross Domestic Product...

An analysis of the possible determinants of sovereign credit ratings assigned by the two leading credit rating agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, is conducted in this paper by using linear, logistic, and exponential transformations of the rating scales. Of the large number of variables...

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy” at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the chapters in this publication discuss from different...

We use a Three-Stage Least Square (TSLS) method and a system of equations to recursively estimate two components of fiscal policy - responsiveness and persistence - and to infer about the sources of fiscal deterioration (improvement). The results suggest that (i) government spending exhibits...

We assess the performance of National Regulatory Authorities across 16 EU countries regarding economic regulation in telecommunications sector, by constructing a so-called Composite Regulatory Performance Indicator for regulatory aspects such as effectiveness of the national regulatory system,...

We compute the macroeconomic rates of return of public and private investment implicit in a VAR for 14 European Union countries, Canada, Japan and the United States. Results point mostly to positive effects of public and private investment on output, whereas public investment crowds out private...