Recent theoretical research on the technological development of dynamic European regions has drawn attention to the supposedly key role of "untraded interdependencies" between local firms and other organisations (Storper, 1995), involving informal inter-firm networking (Yeung, 1994) and...

The past fifty years have witnessed a major transformation of Britain's urban system. Some cities have consistently prospered and been relatively successful in terms of maintaining or increasing their share of national employment and population, whilst others have lost ground and have struggled...

This paper, extracted from the forthcoming report on 'Moving Freight with Better Trucks' describes the innovations in truck engine and vehicle technology which aim to: i)improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions of CO2; ii) improve truck efficiency by increasing payload capacity; iii) improve...

On 11-12 November 2008, SUERF and Banque Centrale du Luxembourg organized a conference on Productivity in the Financial Services Sector on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg. The conference addressed three main themes: first, stylized facts on banks'...

This paper discusses the effects of small banks on economic growth. We first theoretically show that small banks operating at a regional level can spur local economic growth. As compared with big interregional banks, small regional banks are more effective in promoting local economic growth,...

We analyze the impact of efficiency on bank risk. We also consider whether bank capital has an effect on this relationship. We model the inter-temporal relationships among efficiency, capital and risk for a large sample of commercial banks operating in the European Union. We find that reductions...

The present SUERF Study includes a selection of papers based on the authors’ contributions to the Vienna conference, jointly organized by SUERF, the OeNB and the Austrian Society for Bank Research. In reply to the financial crisis, the Great Recession and sovereign debt crisis, many central...

We investigate ownership effects on capital and adjustments speed to the target capital ratio in China from 2000 to 2012 and find that state-owned banks hold higher levels of capital than banks of other ownership types. Foreign banks are more highly capitalized than local non-state banks but...

In the current low interest rate environment in the euro area there is potential for a sudden increase in interest rates and heightened interest rate risk (IRR). By using a sample of 81 euro area banks during the period 2014Q4-2018Q1 and a confidential supervisory measure of IRR, this paper...