We study how financial market efficiency affects a measure of diversification of output across industrial sectors borrowed from the portfolio allocation literature. Using data on sector-level value added for a wide cross section of countries and for various levels of disaggregation, we construct...

We identify the effect of financial integration on international business cycle synchronization, by utilizing a confidential database on banks’ bilateral exposure and employing a country-pair panel instrumental variables approach. Countries that become more integrated over time have less...

In this study we investigate the determinants of financing obstacles using survey data on a sample of around 5000 firms from the euro area countries. This completely new survey – started at the end of 2009 - gives us the opportunity to test whether firm characteristics such as size, age,...

This paper uses survey data for 29,000 households from 29 transition economies to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, bank ownership structure and the development of the financial infrastructure. At the household level we find that the holding of a...

The economic gap between the EU and three candidate countries - Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey - is significant. Living standards, as measured by GDP per capita at PPP, are less than one third of the level prevailing in the former EU-15 u0096 and about half of the average level in the new member...

The report summarises the results generated in empirical analysis within a larger EU's 5th framework programme for research and development on the determinants of productivity gaps between the current EU-15 and accession states in central and eastern Europe. The focus of research in this part of...