One feature of the global economy in recent years has been the increasing number and importance of new investment funds (private equity (PE), hedge funds (HFs), and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)), which are sometimes referred to as alternative investment funds (AIFs). This increase has...

This report examines whether investment funds – in particular, private equity, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds – help to revive underperforming companies and thereby contribute to employment growth or whether, on the contrary, they strive to maximise financial returns at the expense...

The hedge fund industry has risen in 2007 to the top of the international political agenda, yet the debate surrounding it is limited by a lack of understanding of how the industry functions, or even how it is to be defined. The industry consists largely of investment funds operating from...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the limits of the "originate to distribute" model of banking, but its nexus with the macroeconomy and monetary policy remains unexplored. I build a DSGE model with banks (along the lines of Holmström and Tirole [28] and Parlour and Plantin [39]) and...

We augment a standard monetary DSGE model to include a banking sector and financial markets. We fit the model to Euro Area and US data. We find that agency problems in financial contracts, liquidity constraints facing banks and shocks that alter the perception of market risk and hit financial...

The overall objective of the present study is to improve the quality the EC and other donors’ media support by providing an analyses of the EC ́s assistance so far and recommendations on future strategies and modalities. This present report focuses on the activities so far, while a separate...

The present report is an evaluation of the projects aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (ADP), financed under the European Initiative on Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). The evaluation, undertaken between November 2006 and February 2007, covers a portfolio of 28 projects, some dating...