The current financial crisis has been characterized as a 'Minsky' moment, and as such provides the conditions required for a reregulation of the financial system similar to that of the New Deal banking reforms of the 1930s. However, Minsky's theory was not one that dealt in moments but rather in...

This would seem an opportune moment to reshape banking systems in the Americas. But any effort to rethink and improve banking must acknowledge three major barriers. The first is a crisis of vision: there has been too little consideration of what kind of banking system would work best for...

While results are starting to emerge, not much is known yet about the dynamics of the labor markets of the former Eastern economies, especially in the context of the current Financial Crisis. Arguably, this is mainly due to paucity of (panel) data. By examining labor market transitions, earnings...

Im Zentrum der europäischen Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik hat in den letzten Jahren das Konzept der Flexicurity gestanden. Es will eine ausgewogene Mischung aus Sicherheit und Flexibilität auf den Arbeitsmärkten in der Europäischen Union gewährleisten. Der folgende Überblick beschreibt...

We provide a novel empirical analysis of the South Korean credit market that reveals large volumes of excess credit since the late 1970s, indicating that a sizeable proportion of total credit was being used to refinance unprofitable projects. Our findings are consistent with theoretical...

Starting from the observation that all firms in Ireland (foreign and domestic in manufacturing and services industries) were hit by the crisis, the paper asks whether there is a difference in the behaviour of foreign and domestic firms. One hypothesis is that foreign multinationals are less...

An environment for the activities of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF) has fundamentally changed over the two recent decades. The strong development of financial innovations as well as of financial globalisation was among major forces driving the change and shaping the economic growth...

We study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 EMU countries between Q1/1999 and Q1/2010. We apply a semiparametric time-varying coefficient model to identify, to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to...

In this paper, we study the effects of US target rate changes and related communications by members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on spreads for emerging market sovereign credit default swaps (CDS). Using GARCH models, we find that during the pre-financial crisis sub-sample (April...