We examine the role of geographic, economic, and institutional factors in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Europe, using a cross-section of inward bilateral investments. We estimate and assess the expected benefits, the required reform efforts, and the efficiency of reform options...

This article estimates price-cost margins for the Portuguese markets in a context of imperfect competition in the labour market. The database used includes virtually the universe of Portuguese firms for the period 2005-2009. The results strongly reject the hypothesis of perfect competition in...

Based on Contingent Claims Analysis, this paper develops a method to monitor systemic risk in the European banking system. Aggregated Distance-to-Default series are generated using option prices information from systemically important banks and the STOXX Europe 600 Banks Index. These indicators...

This article offers an extensive overview of competition indicators in the Portuguese economy in the period 2000-2009. The article covers qualitative competition indicators as well as classicalprofitability and concentration measures, focusing on the differences between tradable and non-tradable...

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of bank capital on lending patterns of commercial banks in the United States. We construct an unbalanced quarterly panel of around seven thousand medium sized commercial banks over sixty quarters, from 1996 to 2010. Using two different measures of...

We explore the use of univariate low-frequency filters in macroeconomic forecasting. This amounts to targeting only specific fluctuations of the time series of interest. We show through simulations that such approach is warranted and, using US data, we confirm empirically that consistent gains...

What are the macroeconomic implications of higher leveraged borrowing? To address this question, we develop a business cycle model with credit frictions in which firms reallocate capital among themselves through the credit market. We find that looser collateral requirements moderate the...

Portuguese firms engage in intense reallocation, most employers simultaneously hire and separate from workers, resulting in high excess worker turnover flows. These flows are constrained by the employment protection gap between open-ended and fixed-term contracts. We explore a reform that...

Population ageing is a key trend in Western economies. The impact of this trend will be widespread, affecting investment and saving decisions over the next decades, and represents a major challenge to policymakers. Debt sustainability issues in euro area economies may (re)emerge, particularly...

This paper uses firm level survey data from Portugal to investigate how firms adjust their labour costs in the presence of wage rigidities. We document that Portuguese firms, besides reducing employment or freezing nominal base wages, also make frequent use of other cost-cutting strategies, like...