This paper develops Bayesian econometric methods for posterior inference in non-parametric mixed frequency VARs using additive regression trees. We argue that regression tree models are ideally suited for macroeconomic nowcasting in the face of extreme observations, for instance those produced...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, economists have struggled to obtain reliable economic predictions, with standard models becoming outdated and their forecasting performance deteriorating rapidly. This paper presents two novelties that could be adopted by forecasting institutions in unconventional...

In response to the two waves of Covid-19 in 2020, the Italian government implemented a general lockdown in March, but geographically targeted policies during fall. We exploit this natural experiment to compare the effects of the two policies in a difference-in-differences design, leveraging a...

How financial investors may react to policy events related to sustainability and climate change mitigation in particular, is a key question with implications for sustainable finance and financial stability. We address this question by carrying out a multi-period difference-in-difference approach...

We develop the first top-down method to estimate the greenness of financial portfolios, in terms of alignment to the EU Taxonomy for sustainable activities. We also develop a method to estimate, at the same time, the portfolio exposure to climate transition risk. We provide sector-level,...

This paper studies the evolution of the greenium, i.e. a risk premium linked to firms' greenness and environmental transparency, based on individual stock returns. We estimate an asset pricing model with time-varying risk premia, where the greenium is associated to a priced 'greenness and...

We construct a unique and comprehensive data set of 19 real-time daily macroeconomic indicators for 11 Eurozone countries, for the 5/11/2009{4/25/2013 period. We use this new data set to characterize the time-varying dependence of the cross-section of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads...

In November 2015, the European Commission adopted a legislative proposal to set up a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS), a single deposit insurance system for all bank deposits in the Banking Union. JRC was requested to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of introducing a single...

We analyse micro and macro drivers of coverage ratios in a cross–country sample of euro area banks. Among the former, we find that coverage ratios increase with the reliance on deposit funding and when asset quality is very poor. Among the latter, coverage ratios increase with GDP growth and...

We offer an applied approach to the double materiality assessment of environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters, which could serve as practical guidance to the 60K companies required by EU regulation (CSRD) to carry out this assessment. Focussing on the financial materiality of climate...