Around the turn of the year 2005/2006, the Russian freezing of natural gas exports to the Ukraine led to a European gas crisis. Using event study techniques, we first investigate whether the Russian suspension of gas deliveries, the announcement of this suspension as well as its withdrawal had...

We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We...

We examine real business cycle convergence for 41 euro area regions and 48 US states. Results obtained by a panel model with spatial correlation indicate that the relevance of common business cycle factors is rather stable over the past two decades in the euro area and the US. Ongoing business...

This paper analyzes the response of the European stock markets to the monetary policy shocks by the European Central Bank using the heteroskedasticity based approach of Rigobon (2003). We find that monetary policy tightening has a heterogeneous impact on the Euro Area sectors on the day the...