This paper is a case study that focuses on possible incentive problems in the management of Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs). CLOs are the most important type of special purpose vehicles in the leveraged loan market, and their managers appear to have a considerable impact on performance....

This paper presents information on wage-bargaining institutions, collected for 23 European countries, plus the US and Japan using a standardised questionnaire. Our data provide information from the years 1995 and 2006, for four sectors of activity and the aggregate economy. The main findings...

In this paper we examine the sustainability of euro area public finances against the backdrop of population ageing. We critically assess the widely used projections of the Working Group on Ageing Populations (AWG) of the EU's Economic Policy Committee and argue that ageing costs may be higher...

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of price and wage adjustment in European firms and on the extent of nominal rigidities. It uses a unique dataset collected through a firm-level survey conducted in a broad range of countries and covering various sectors. Several conclusions are...

It has been well established that the wages of individual workers react little, especially downwards, to shocks that hit their employer. This paper presents new evidence from a unique survey of firms across Europe on the prevalence of downward wage rigidity in both real and nominal terms. We...

Firms have multiple options at the time of adjusting their wage bills. However, previous literature has mainly focused on base wages. We broaden the analysis beyond downward rigidity in base wages by investigating the use of other margins of labour cost adjustment at the firm level. Using data...

This paper documents the existence of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for eight EU countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) at two different points in time (in general, 1995 and 2002). It then looks into...

Survey results in 15 European countries for almost 15,000 firms reveal that Belgian firms react more than the average European firm to adverse shocks by reducing permanent and temporary employment. On the basis of a firm-level analysis, this paper confirms that the different reaction to shocks...

I propose a discrete choice method for estimating monetary policy reaction functions based on research by Hu and Phillips (2004). This method distinguishes between determining the underlying desired rate which drives policy rate changes and actually implementing interest rate changes. The method...

This paper analyses Delta CoVaR proposed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2008) as a tool for identifying/ranking systemically important institutions and assessing interconnectedness. We develop a test of significance of Delta CoVaR that allows determining whether or not a financial institution can...