Prognostizieren ist schwer, vor allem, wenn es die Zukunft betrifft - mit diesen wie mit anderen Mahnungen werden Praktiker wie Wissenschaftler davor gewarnt, sich auf das dünne Eis des Orakels von Delphi zu begeben. Auch ironisierende Menetekel aus der Literatur wie Mark Twains Bemerkung über...

In the spring 2001, the world economy is in a delicate situation. The vigorous growth momentum that prevailed in the recovery in 1999 and into 2000 is clearly gone. In the second half of 2000, global growth decelerated rapidly. In contrast to the last downturn of the world economy in 1997/98,...

European integration is expected to enhance the attractiveness of EL) countries for domestic and foreign investors. This has caused concerns in developing countries that foreign direct investment there may be diverted to Europe. In preparing for the Single Market, European companies have indeed...

The expansion of Western European production accelerated in the first half of 1997. Exports were the main engine, driven by a devaluation of European currencies and strong growth abroad. Domestic demand also picked up somewhat led by investment in machinery and equipment. Inflation remained at...

This paper asks the question: Why has the ?general-to-specific? cointegrated VAR approach as developed in Europe had only limited success in the US as a tool for doing empirical macroeconomics, where what might be called a ?theory comes first? approach dominates? The reason this paper highlights...

The politically and legally complicated character of the EU Eastern Enlargement heavily influenced the conflict between the legal and economic rationality underlying the construction of the EMR-II. This makes the ERM-II vulnerable to currency crises and creates conditions for a widespread...

This paper looks at the dynamic price relationship between spreads in the corporate bond market and credit default swaps (CDS). It picks up where Blanco et al (2005) leave off but is focused on European credit markets. The study is based on companies listed in the iTraxx CDS index and thus on...

In credit risk modelling, the correlation of unobservable asset returns is a crucial component for the measurement of portfolio risk. In this paper, we estimate asset correlations from monthly time series of Moody's KMV asset values for around 2,000 European firms from 1996 to 2004. We compare...

We analyze collateralized loan obligation (CLO) transactions by European banks (1997 - 2004), trying to identify firm-specific and macroeconomic factors influencing an institution's securitization decision. CLO issuance seems to be an appropriate funding tool for large banks with high risk and...

This paper uses a proportional hazard model to study foreign direct investment by Japanese manufacturers in Europe between 1970 and 1994. We divide each firm?s investment total into a sequence of individual investment decisions and analyze how firm-specific characteristics affect each decision....