This evaluation covers European Commission support to agricultural commodities in all Africa Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries over the period 2000-2009 in the context of the policies and approaches laid down in two Communications that set out the European Union’s (EU) Action Plan for...

Article 39b(2) of the CRA Regulation states that the European Commission shall adopt a report by end 2014 – after receiving ESMA’s technical advice – on the appropriateness of the development of a European creditworthiness assessment for sovereign debt.In its request for advice, the...

For the purposes of this advice, ESMA provides its views based on the quantitative information contained in the CEREP public database and on information publicly disclosed by credit rating agencies registered with ESMA.Additionally, ESMA’s advice has been informed by its first supervisory...

The European Securities and Markets Authorities (ESMA) has published this report to inform of the outcome and findings of its general investigation in the way credit rating agencies (CRAs) conduct surveillance of structured finance credit ratings, as indicated in ESMA’s Credit Rating Agencies...

One of the objectives of the CRA Regulation is to increase competition in the markets for credit ratings by encouraging issuers to use smaller credit rating agencies. To this end, Article 8d(1) of the CRA Regulation states that where issuers or related third parties intend to appoint at least...

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...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, for West Germany, France, Italy and US, we econometrically select within a SVAR model some fiscal policy regimes, i.e. a u0094set of rulesu0094 for the implementation of fiscal policies. Second, we identify the fiscal policy shocks related to different...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...