During the financial crisis numerous European governments decided to rescue domestic banks with public funds to prevent a collapse of the banking system. To internalize the public costs, bank levies have been introduced in many countries. This paper analyzes the German bank levy which was...

There is empirical evidence for a time-varying relationship between exchange rates and fundamentals. Such a relationship with time-varying coefficients can be estimated by a Kalman filter model. A Kalman filter estimates the coefficients recursively depending on the prediction error of the...

Regional banks as savings and cooperative banks are widespread in continental Europe. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, however, they had problems keeping their profitability which is an important quantitative indicator for the health of a bank and the banking sector overall. We use a...

The financial crisis affected regions in Europe in a different magnitude. We examine whether regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster using a sample which includes the aftermath of the financial crisis. We measure the intermediation quality of a bank by...

We scrutinize the role of capital flows in competitiveness in a set of seven euroarea member countries (Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic) in the context of real convergence and crisis. A specific focus is on Greece. The paper extends the seminal...

The financial crisis affected regions in Europe in a different magnitude. This is why we examine whether regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster in 'normal' times and are more resilient in 'bad' ones. For this purpose, we measure the intermediation...

We scrutinize the role of capital flows for competitiveness in seven euro-area countries in the context of real convergence and crisis with a specific focus on Greece. The paper extends the seminal Balassa-Samuelson model to include international capital markets. Capital flows are assumed to be...

This paper examines whether European regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster and are more resilient to negative shocks than its less efficient peers. For this purpose, we measure a bank's intermediation quality by estimating its pro t and cost efficiency...