The report provides evidence of low protection of companies against the risks of the lack of payment from their buyers and the impact of bad debts in their financial situation, which is especially harmful for SMEs. While most of commercial trade is carried out on the basis of credit, the...

This report surveys recent empirical research on the state and development of retail banking integration in Europe. It finds a broad consensus that retail banking integration is still limited, although integration seems to have gained momentum more recently. At the same time, the survey finds...

This paper argues that transparency-boosting measures specifically tailored to commodity and commodity derivatives markets are much needed. In particular, encouraging the creation of a clearing infrastructure for OTC commodity and commodity derivatives markets would be desirable. Moreover, EU...

The financial crisis exposed dangerous weaknesses in the regulatory and oversight structure that need to be urgently corrected to restore confidence in the financial system and to keep the single market alive. Towards this end, this CEPS Task Force report puts forward three main policy...

This report considers four short-term, alternative scenarios for the eurozone and analyses their possible implications for global economic trends and the gold market. Overall, the main findings suggest that in the near future, motives other than inflation hedging will be the main drivers of gold...

The key concept underlying the Basel II framework for risk measurement and corresponding equity capital standards is that the existing regulations pertaining to credit risk will be individualised through reference to the internal ratings of banks. In accordance with the regulatory guidelines,...

The aim of this work is to provide empirical elements on the performance of consumer credit companies in the European Union by applying efficiency frontier techniques. These techniques, widely applied in banking literature, provide sophisticated measures of performance – the efficiency scores....