This paper deals with economic growth in Europe. The special emphasis is in key institutional factors that are commonly assumed to affect aggregate growth: functioning of labor markets, availability of labor and capital, and the size of government. For more explicit measures, we use the data on...

We investigate the relationship between the daily average interbank overnight borrowing rate (AOR) and the credit default swap price (CDS) of 60 banks using the Eurosystem’s proprietary data from mid-2008 to mid-2013. We find that the AOR which is observable only by the competent Eurosystem...

This paper deals with the problems of assessing the effects of fiscal policy in the European Monetary Union. Here, we face wide cross-country differences in key fiscal parameters, some of which may also be vary over time (business cycle). Moreover, these effects may also depend on trade...

This paper deals with the incidence of housing subsidies, which is analysed using Finnish panel data. The main data set comprises 50 000 households that received housing allowances during the period 2000–2008. In addition, we utilize repeated cross-sections of all Finnish households for...

This paper studies forecasts errors at the micro level using two alternative survey data sets. The main focus is on inflation and real GDP growth forecasts in the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. For comparison, inflation forecasts in the US Survey of Professional Forecasters are also...

This paper compares the GMM and measured expectations in estimating the conventional New Keynesian macro model for the Euro area and the United States. The use of measured expectations strongly reduces the importance of lagged output and inflation terms.

The relationship between suicide and business cycles is analysed using long Finnish time series for the period 1878-1994. The results clearly show that suicide increases along with age and is related to both GDP growth (inversely), bankruptcies and unemployment.

This paper analyzes the use of cash in the Euro area. It attempts to give at least a partial answer to the question of whether cash is predominantly used in the shadow economy and whether, consequently, the behavior of cash balances is useful in monitoring changes in the shadow economy. The...

It is well-known that estimates of fiscal policy effects differ a lot. In this paper we try get some idea of the magnitude of these differences and the underlying reasons for these differences. In the European Monetary Union we face wide cross-country differences in fiscal institutions and key...

This paper provides an empirical test for the hypothesis that suicides are related to economic determinants. More precisely a hypothesis is tested that changes in the suicide rate are determined by changes in the expected growth rate of income. This hypothesis is tested with an error-correction...