Despite their significant decline in recent years, bank interest rates in Greece continue to stand above euro area averages and in the case of some banking products the differential is considerable. This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of bank interest rates and spreads...

Although the close empirical relationship between the evolution of mortgage lending and housing prices is well established in the literature, the direction of causation is less clear from a theoretical standpoint. We apply multivariate cointegration techniques in order to address this issue...

This report analyses the financial position of non-financial enterprises in the euro area, in particular the amount of external financing, the choice between debt and equity and the composition and maturity structure of debt. It aims at identifying the main features of the euro area, as well as...

This paper examines questions related to possible capital account liberalisation in the Mediterranean countries. First, we provide an overview of the extent to which these countries have capital controls along with their exchange rate regimes and some basic macroeconomic aggregates. Second, we...

This paper studies the impact of recent mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the cost and profit efficiency of banks in Greece. To this end, three methods have been applied: (i) analysis of developments in certain cost and profit indicators and their dispersion for bank groups according to their...

This paper examines the behaviour of the demand for money in Greece during 1976:1-2000:4, a period that included many of the influences that cause money-demand instability. Two empirical methodologies, vector error correction (VEC) modelling and second-generation random coefficient (RC)...

This paper develops an international oligopoly model where foreign and domestic firms simultaneously choose their pricing strategies under the assumption of non-zero conjectural variations. The model captures the links between domestic and foreign producers’ prices and establishes a...

In this paper we develop a method for testing the implications of the Bernanke-Blinder model for monetary policy transmission. Multivariate cointegration techniques are used in a sample that includes six major industrial countries with data covering the last 25 years. Moreover, we examine...