This paper tries to shed light on the historical analogies of the current crisis. To that end we compare the current sample distribution of Dow Jones Industrial Average Index returns for a 769-day period (from 15 September 2008, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, to September 2011), with all...

The euro was expected to make Europe stronger and more integrated. So far, it has not succeeded in this endeavour. The EMU's original design underplayed the importance of banking, fiscal and political union and failed to provide the right incentives to promote the structural reforms needed to...

This study attempts to identify and trace inter-linkages between sovereign and banking risk in the euro area. To this end, we use an indicator of banking risk in each country based on the Contingent Claim Analysis literature, and 10-year government yield spreads over Germany as a measure of...