The application of the market microstructure theory to foreign exchange markets in the last few years has introduced a new approach to the analysis of exchange rates. The most important variable of the microstructure analysis, the so-called order flow has proven to be suitable for explaining a...

Market analysts and central banks often use the implied volatility of FX options as an indicator of expected exchange rate uncertainty. The aim of our study is to investigate the limits of this statistic. We present some key factors that may deviate the value of implied volatility from the...

Customer order flow - signed transaction volume between market makers and their customers - is a key concept in the microstructure approach to exchange rates. We attempt to explore what the data tells us about the role of customer order flow in the market for Hungarian forint, using the standard...

This report discusses the activity of credit guarantee schemes (CGSs) in Western Europe and presents an analysis based on a novel survey, conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group , among 18 credit guarantee organisations in 13 countries and 33 banks operating in 17 countries. The...

Does IFI funding provide support to SMEs receiving such funding? We assess the impact of funding by the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the performance of 5,223 SMEs in eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during 2008-2014. Our results, derived from propensity score matching and...

We look at the impact of intermediated funding provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the 28 member countries of the European Union between 2008 and 2014. We use a combination of propensity score matching and...

Using a representative sample of European firms, this paper studies whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decisions to invest in employee training. It combines survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index...