The paper examines proposals for euro bonds. The aim is to highlight the broader context of various proposals and, in particular, to assess their impact less as a solution to the problems of the current economic and financial conjuncture and, more, to focus on their long-term consequences for...

The relation between bond and equity returns serves as a proxy for estimating the premia investors' demand on their equity portfolio holdings and assessing the substitution effects between the two markets. With this in mind, we examine empirically the co-movements and the underlying information...

The rational expectations hypothesis for survey and model-based inflation forecasts ? from the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Greenbook respectively ? is examined by properly taking into account persistence in the data. The finding of near-unit-root effects in inflation and inflation...

In the present paper we study the determinants of the margins paid by euro-area non-financial corporations (NFCs) for their bank loans on top of the rates they earn for their deposits (bank lending margins). We use panel VAR techniques, in order to test for causality relationships and produce...

We discuss the factors behind sovereign credit ratings and reproduce their quantitative compo-nent, focusing on the case of Greece. The sovereign credit rating of Greece is still lower than the investment grade threshold. However, some of the fundamentals of the Greek economy are shown to be...