The Czech financial sector has changed dramatically since transition. In fifteen years, it has developed from a state-owned mono-bank into a privatised bank-based financial system with developing capital and private equity markets. This country focus analyses the development of the financial...

Four years after the introduction of the euro, this paper provides an overview of the current structure and integration of the euro area financial systems and related policy initiatives. We first compare the euro area financial structure with that of the United States and Japan. Using new and...

This article addresses the relationship between the real economy and the financial sector, asking the question: to what extent does the crisis in the financial sector cast a shadow on economic activity? Various potential linkages are investigated, for example the impact of credit restrictions on...

We provide a general characterization of the structure of rational expectations equilibria of any degree of revelation for pure exchange, sequential economies, with deffinitely many states of private information, an incomplete financial market and nominal assets. We estimate the dimension of the...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

This paper analyses the link between finance and growth by studying the effect that the process of financial deregulation and harmonisation of banking laws at the EU level has brought about on growth over the last 40 years. Our main findings point to the existence of a positive long-run growth...

This paper discusses a wide range of indicators of the degree of integration of the euro area banking system. It is concerned with volume data, a less developed field of research compared with studies on prices/rates. We first set out a methodological framework, a mixture of elementary and more...

In this paper we assess the importance given in capital markets to the credibility of the European fiscal framework. We evaluate to which extent relevant fiscal policy events taking place in the course of 2002 produced a reaction in the long-term bond segment of the capital markets. Firstly, we...