The worldwide availability of easy external financing has been an essential driver of recent M&A activity and a growing perception exists that such conditions may have resulted in a large number of non-value increasing transactions. This paper evaluates the interaction between credit conditions,...

This paper looks at the performance record of M&As that took place in the European Union financial industry in the period 1998-2002. First, the paper reports evidence on shareholder returns from the merger. Merger announcements implied positive excess returns to the shareholders of the target...

This paper focuses on the pass-through of exchange rate changes into the prices of imports made by euro area countries originating outside the area. Using data on import unit values for thirteen different product categories for each country, we estimate industry-specific rates of pass-through...

This paper studies how investment and production in an economy is allocated across sectors when they face asymmetric financial conditions. Namely, when investors in one sector may run projects with higher loan-to-values than in another sector. Investors decide where to invest based on total...

This paper focuses on the non linear adjustment of import prices in national currency to shocks in exchange rates and foreign prices measured in the exporters' currency of products originating outside the euro area and imported into European Union countries (EU 15). The paper looks at three...

En este trabajo se pretende comprobar la posible existencia de histéresis en la oferta de exportaciones de manufacturas en algunos países de la zona del euro, es decir, se analiza si los movimientos transitorios del tipo de cambio tienen un impacto permanente sobre las exportaciones. La...

This paper analyses corporate investment decisions in France and Spain, focusing on the role of financial constraints in explaining investment behaviour. For this purpose, we take advantage of very carefully harmonised data sets that allow for the use of variables homogeneously defined in both...

This paper examines financial pressure facing Spanish companies. A number of stylised facts regarding the financial performance and financing decisions of Spanish firms are first presented for the period 1985-2000 using repeated annual cross-sections of around 5,000 manufacturing and retail...

This paper uses a well-established growth accounting framework to measure the contribution of ICT goods (considered as capital inputs) to output and labour productivity growth in the Spanish economy. We apply this framework to a sample of around 1300 Spanish firms per year over the period...

This paper identifies the basic features of the price setting mechanism in the Spanish economy, using a large dataset that contains over 1.1 million price records and covers around 70% of the expenditure on the CPI basket. In particular, the paper identifies differences in the frequency and size...