This paper assesses the possible contemporaneous relationship between stock index prices, earnings and long-term government bond yields for a large number of countries and over a time period that spans several decades. In a cointegration framework, our analysis looks at three hypotheses. First,...

Using count-data techniques, this paper studies the determinants of currency choice in the issuance of foreign-currency-denominated bonds. In particular, we investigate whether bond issuers choose their issuance currency in order to exploit the borrowing-cost savings associated with deviations...

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country’s prosperity. The paper focuses on olitical events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy’s financial...

This paper studies the determinants of the euro exchange rate during the European sovereign debt crisis, allowing a role for macroeconomic fundamentals, policy actions and the public debate by policy makers. It finds that the euro exchange rate mainly danced to its own tune, with a particularly...

This paper assesses redenomination risk in the euro area. We first estimate daily default-risk-free yield curves for French, German, and Italian bonds that can be redenominated and for bonds that cannot. Then, we extract the compensation for redenomination risk from the yield spreads between...

In this paper, we analyse the effect of unconventional monetary policies on the EUR/CHF exchange rate. We apply the synthetic control approach to four events defining a change in the Swiss National Bank's monetary policy during the 2009 to 2011 period before the introduction of the exchange rate...

Previous empirical evidence indicates that uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) does not hold for target zone exchange rates, like those in the European Monetary System and in the Nordic countries. We explore a target zone model where the market inferes the probability of a realignment of the...

We study the relationship between foreign exchange trading activity and volatility on the USD/EUR foreign exchange market on the basis of a unique data set around the events of 09/11/2001. We find that volatility and bid-ask spreads are by far larger at that time, but the shock is not...

This paper makes three contributions to our understanding of the price discovery process in currency markets. First, it provides evidence that this process cannot be the familiar one based on adverse selection and customer spreads, since such spreads are inversely related to a trade?s likely...