Paul De Grauwe's Eurozone fragility hypothesis states that sovereign debt markets in a monetary union without a lender-of-last-resort are vulnerable to self-fulfilling dynamics fuelled by pessimistic investor sentiment that can trigger default. We test this contention by applying an eclectic...

The chapter is organized as follows. The section “The Business Structure of Financial Conglomerates” provides an overarching discussion on the corporate structure of financial conglomerates along with some data on these institutions. The section “The Drivers of Financial Conglomerates”...

The European market of banks and insurance companies has traditionally no exact boundaries between insurance and banking activities. Such business arena poses distinctive challenges to both banking and insurance industries. The paper statistically evaluates the feasibility of a hybrid portfolio...