This is the first EEA publication to address the impacts of natural disasters and technological accidents across Europe. Focusing on major events between 1998 and 2002, the report adds value to existing studies by bringing together available information on their human and economic costs and...

The present study aims to provide a critical analysis of the causes that lead to the most relevant recent forest fires events in the EU, focusing in particular on Southern European countries. In particular, the study assesses to what extent forest fires have been influenced by forest management,...

We compute public sector performance (PSP) and efficiency (PSE) indicators, comprising a composite and seven sub-indicators, for 23 industrialised countries. The first four sub-indicators are u0093opportunityu0094 indicators that take into account administrative, education and health outcomes...

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...

To measure contagion empirically, we propose using a Bayesian time-varying coefficient model estimated with Markov ChainMonte Carlo methods. The proposed measure works in the joint presence of heteroskedasticity and omitted variables and does not require knowledge of the timing of the crisis. It...

This paper investigates the pass-through of external shocks, i.e. oil price shocks, exchange rate shocks, and non-oil import price shocks to euro area inflation at different stages of distribution (import prices, producer prices and consumer prices). The analysis is based on a VAR model that...

This paper uses the co-incidence of extreme shocks to banksu0092 risk to examine within country and across country contagion among large EU banks. Banksu0092 risk is measured by the first difference of weekly distances to default and abnormal returns. Using Monte Carlo simulations, the paper...

By placing store-level price data into bivariate Structural VAR models of inflation and relative price asymmetry, this study evaluates the quantitative importance of idiosyncratic pricing shocks in short-run aggregate price change dynamics. Robustly to alternative definitions of the relative...