In order to capture the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market, several aspects need to be taken into account. First, containment measures put in place in member states at different times and with different levels of severity determined the interruption of several economic...

The Netherlands leads the world in the use of temporary agency workers: in 2000 nearly 5 per cent of Dutch employees were agency workers. The use of agency workers is very sensitive to business cycle fluctuations. This paper reports on an exploration of the relation between GDP and agency work....

A number of jurisdictions are considering imposing price caps on the interchange fees that card issuers receive from merchant acquirers when cardholders pay with their cards. Several have already done so. This paper examines the net impact of these price caps on consumers. The economics of...

The participation of women in top-level corporate boards (or rather the lack of it) is subject to intense public debate. Several countries are considering legally binding quotas to increase the share of women on boards. Indeed, research on board diversity suggests positive effects of gender...

The participation of women in top-level corporate boards (or rather the lack of it) is subject to intense public debate. Several countries are considering legally binding quotas to increase the share of women on boards. Indeed, research on board diversity suggests positive effects of gender...

The participation of women in top-level corporate boards (or rather the lack of it) is subject to intense public debate. Several countries are considering legally binding quotas to increase the share of women on boards. Indeed, research on board diversity suggests positive effects of gender...

Using aggregate balance sheet data from banks across the EU-25 over the period from 1997 to 2005 this paper provides empirical evidence that national banking market concentration has a negative impact on European banks’ financial soundness as measured by the Z-score technique while controlling...

We analyze the takeover premiums paid for a sample of European bank mergers between 1997 and 2007. We find that acquiring banks value profitable, high-growth, and low-risk targets. We also find that the strength of bank regulation and supervision and of deposit insurance regimes in Europe has...

Information asymmetries can severely limit cross-border border expansion of banks. When a bank enters a new market, it has incomplete information about potential new clients. Such asymmetries are reduced by credit registers, which distribute financial data on bank clients. We investigate the...

We study the effect of interbank market integration on small firm finance in the build-up to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We use a comprehensive data set that contains contract terms on individual loans to 6,047 firms across 14 European countries between 1998:01 and 2005:12. We account for...