This is study empirically examine the impact of market conditions on credit spreads asmotivated by recently developed structural credit risk models. Using credit default swap(CDS) spreads, we find that, in the time series, average credit spreads are decreasing inGDP growth rate, but increasing...

The main objective of this paper is to study whether the introduction of the euro hadan impact on the degree of integration of European Government bond markets. Weadopt the CAPM-based model of Bekaert and Harvey (1995) to compare, from thebeginning of Monetary Union until June 2008, the...

We study how the structure of housing finance affects the transmission of monetarypolicy shocks. We document three main facts: first, the features of residentialmortgage markets differ markedly across industrialized countries; second, and accordingto a wide range of indicators, the transmission...

This paper estimates the wealth effects on consumption in the euro area as a whole. Ishow that: (i) financial wealth effects are relatively large and statistically significant;(ii) housing wealth effects are virtually nil and not significant; (iii) consumptiongrowth exhibits strong persistence...

We consider a simple extension of the basic new-Keynesian setup in which we relaxthe assumption of frictionless financial markets. In our economy, asymmetricinformation and default risk lead banks to optimally charge a lending rate above therisk-free rate. Our contribution is threefold. First,...

This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets forfactors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households’funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and taxbenefits of corporate debt are equalizing...

In this paper we analyzed the violations of UIP for the Swiss Franc against the Dollar, the Euro, the Yen, thePound and the Canadian Dollar using recent data up to fall 2008. This exercise provides the following mainresults : first the Swiss interest rate puzzle disappeared, i.e. mean returns on...

This paper delineates the simultaneous impact of non-anticipated information onmean and variance of the intraday return process by including appropriate variablesaccounting for the news flow into both the mean and the variance function. This allowsus to differentiate between the consistent price...

As is well known, the uncovered interest rate parity fails in the short run but usually holds in the long run. This paper analyses the long and short run interest rate parity of 10 mayor OECD currencies and finds that there is a long run failure of the uncovered interest rate parity condition...

We use a dynamic adjustment model and panel methodology to investigatethe determinants of a time- varying optimal capital structure. Because firmsmay temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure in the presenceof adjustment costs, we also endogenize the adjustment process. In partic...