Using parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques, we analyze the sustainability of the recently growing current account imbalances in the Euro Area and test whether the introduction of the European Monetary Union has aggravated these imbalances. For these purposes two alternative...

We review the major provisions of Dodd-Frank, focusing on the monitoring of systemic risk, the limitation on proprietary trading, the regulation of the hedge fund industry, credit rating agencies, and the rules applicable to derivative trading. We compare these provisions with the recent...

This policy note tries to understand the slow job recovery in the United States as the economy exists a recession. We show that the time-varying Okun coefficient has declined since the early 1990s, thus being consistent with the observation of jobless growth. This finding contrasts with other...

We analyze the feedback mechanisms between economic downturns and financial stress for several euro area countries. Our study employs newly constructed financial condition indices that incorporate banking variables extensively. We apply a non-linear Vector Smooth Transition Autoregressive...

We analyze how the impact of a change in the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio on economic growth depends on the state of the financial market. A dynamic growth model is put forward demonstrating that debt affects macroeconomic activity in a non-linear manner due to amplifi- cations from the financial...

In this paper we set up a baseline, but nevertheless advanced and complete model rep-resenting detailed goods market dynamics, heterogeneous labor markets, dual and cross-dual wage-price adjustment processes, as well as counter-cyclical government policies. The cyclical movements of output...

Economic research of the last decade linking macroeconomic fundamentals to asset prices has revealed evidence that standard intertemporal asset pricing theory is not successful in explaining (unconditional) ¯rst moments of asset market characteristics such as the risk-free interest rate, equity...

Although the consumption based asset pricing theory appears to be theoretically superior and more elegant than the beta pricing model, in practice the beta pricing model is more widely applied. Indeed, beta pricing models are one of the most widely adopted tools in financial analysis. They...