This paper studies the CDS-bond basis, i.e. a measure of price discrepancies between CDS and bonds spreads, for a sample of investment-graded US firms. Results show that during the 2007/09 financial crisis the basis was time varying and negatively correlated to: the “Libor-OIS” spread, a...

This paper studies the relative pricing of euro area sovereign CDS and the underlying government bonds. Our sample comprises weekly CDS and bond spreads of ten euro area countries for the period from January 2006 to June 2010. We first compare the determinants of CDS spreads and bond spreads and...

This paper examines the house price dynamics for thirteen European countries. A Markov-switching error correction model is estimated on house price returns at the country level, with deviations between house prices and fundamentals feeding into the short-run dynamics. The system is assumed to be...

The period of sustained economic growth started after the second world war continued with ups and downs until 1990: the performance of the Italian economy has been disappointing ever since. Many factors have been called into play to explain this phenomenon. The set of "capital sins" affecting...