The literature has documented a positive effect of foreign ownership on firm performance. But is this effect due to a one-time knowledge transfer or does it rely on continuous injections of knowledge? To shed light on this question we focus on divestments, that is, foreign affiliates that are...

A new and extensive panel of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) at the sector level is used to estimate the determinants of non-resource and resource FDI. Since FDI is I(1), we estimate panel errorcorrection models of FDI with spatial lags for FDI and market potential. Our main result is...

Brunnschweiler and Bulte (2008) provide cross-country evidence that the resource curse is a red herring&; once one corrects for the endogeneity of natural resource exports and allows resource abundance to have an effect on growth. Their results show that resource exports are no longer...

We investigate whether the anchoring properties of long-run inflation expectations in the United States, the euro area and the United Kingdom have changed around the economic crisis that erupted in mid-2007. We document that in these three economies, expectations measures extracted from...

This paper investigates whether credit booms are an important warning signal for banking crises in Asian and Latin American emerging market economies. Based on a signalling leading indicator model, the results suggest that credit booms are indeed a prelude for banking crises, especially in Latin...

This study focuses on Dutch shareholders' structures and the participation by funds and banks in particular. Statistics show that foreigners possess the main part of Dutch shares, funds a relatively large part and banks only a small part. In the Netherlands there has been an increasing interest...

In this report a formal game-theoretic framework is presented to analyse the effects of the Stability Pact on monetary policy in the EMU. First, the model shows that high deficits and government debt lead to excessive inflation, causing a rise in interest rates. Second, the analysis confirms the...

Under the new Basle Capital Accords, regulation takes the form of a contingency rule prescribing a certain level of bank capital contingent on the bank's risk taking behaviour in choosing its asset portfolio. In a simple dynamic model of banking with binding regulation we show that such Basle II...

This report reviews Thomas J. Sargents essay 'The Conquest of American Inflation' (1999). Sargent searches for a model which can explain postwar US inflation and which may shed light on the dynamic forces which drive this pattern. Following Sargent, the conquest of US inflation is due to a...

In this paper we present a theoretic framework to analyse pricing structures in debit card schemes. Card-holders value debit cards only to the extent that these are accepted by retailers, while retailers in turn benefit from a widespread usage of cards. This points to the two-sided nature of the...