In December 2006 the Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 on the use of nutrition and health claims (NHCs) on foods was enacted in order to prevent consumer deception and to harmonise law within the EU. Against this background, this paper analyses the potential costs and benefits linked with NHCs and...

The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act (MPR) of 1999 was implemented in April 2001. Empirical evidence indicates a significant change in intra-week price dispersion associated with publicly reported fed cattle grid premiums and discounts occurring after MPR implementation. The research objective...

Many economists have observed that the financial system has a positive and monotoniceffect on economic growth. In this study we reaffirm the finance-growth nexus. We adopta three-tier approach for the study’s methodology using panel data of 66 countries from1986 to 2005. Firstly, we test for...

This paper aims to make an empirical contribution to the discussion of the role of banks and to find out if banking is a declining industry. It takes into account that the role of banks is declining in the United States and the fact that the American economy usually sets the trend for the other...

This paper studies the question to what extent premia for macroeconomic risks in banking are sufficient to avoid banking crises. We investigate a competitive banking system embedded in an overlapping generation model subject to repeated macroeconomic shocks. We show that even if banks fully...

We explore the impact of sophistication in risk management as required by Basel II on banking stability and market conditions. We compare a competitive banking system in which only average ratings are available with a competitive system in which banks are able to assess the default risk of...