This paper examines mergers that lead to an almost immediate replacement of the target firm’s business model in favor of that of the acquiring firm. We examine the post-merger behavior of the two leading European dedicated low-cost airlines, EasyJet and Ryanair, each acquiring another low-cost...

The academic literature has regularly argued that market discipline can support regulatory authority discipline to monitor banking sector stability. This includes, amongst other things, using forward-looking market prices to identify those credit institutions that are most at risk of failure....

In this paper, we test for the stationarity and sustainability of European Union budget deficits over the period 1971 to 2006, using a panel of thirteen member countries. Our testing strategy addresses two key concerns with regard to unit root panel data testing, namely (i) the identication of...

We present a common factor framework of convergence which we implement using principal components analysis. We apply this technique to a dataset of monthly inflation rates of EMU and the Eastern European New Member Countries (NMC) over 1996-2007. In the earlier years, the NMC rates moved...

This paper addresses the following question: how does a higher education funding system influence the trade-off that universities make between research and teaching? We do so by constructing a general model that allows universities to choose actively the quality of their teaching and research...

This paper applies a meta-regression analysis to systematically summarise, integrate and synthesise the results of empirical studies that include market size and labour costs as determinants of FDI. Random effects panel estimation is employed separately for the sample of primary studies that use...

This paper investigates two calendar anomalies in an emerging African market. Both the day of the week and month of the year effects are examined for Ghana. The latter is an interesting case because i) it operates for only three days per week during the sample period and ii) the increased focus...

On 14 September 2007, after failing to find a 'White Knight' to take over its business, Northern Rock bank turned to the Bank of England ('the Bank') for a liquidity lifeline. This was duly provided but failed to quell the financial panic, which manifested itself in the first fully-blown...

This paper investigates the nexus between financial factors and the capital-labour ratio using a rich firm-level data set. It is common in the literature to examine the impact of financial constraints on hiring and firing decisions separately from their impact on decisions related to...

A major current issue in the economics of trade blocs is where the bloc is not just a customs union, but also incorporates substantial regulatory harmonisation or mutual recognition elements. The derivation of the costs of non-membership of such a bloc is not straightforward. In this paper I...