Using two large-scale surveys among households, we examine the drivers of trust in banks, insurance companies, BigTechs, and other people in the United States and the Netherlands, and analyse whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected public trust. Our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic...

We compare the structure of the financial sectors of the EU27, Japan and the United States, looking at a set of 23 indicators. We find a large variation within the European Union in the structure of the financial sector. Using principal components analysis, we identify robust groups of EU...

Countries in a monetary union can adjust to shocks either through internal or external mechanisms. We quantitatively assess for the European Union a number of relevant mechanisms suggested by Mundell’s optimal currency area theory, and compare them to the United States. For this purpose, we...

Banks supply payment services that underpin the smooth operation of the economy. To ensure an efficient payment system, it is important to maintain competition among payment service providers but data available to gauge the degree of competition are quite limited. We propose and implement a...