In this paper we model the volatility of the spread between the overnight interest rate and the central bank policy rate (the policy spread) for the euro area and the UK during the two main phases of the financial crisis that began in late 2007. During the crisis, the policy spread exhibited...

We investigate the role of crude oil spot and futures prices in the process of price discovery by using a cost-of-carry model with an endogenous convenience yield and daily data over the period from January 1990 to December 2008. We provide evidence that futures markets play a more important...

According to the pollution haven hypotheses differences in environmental regulation affect trade flows and plant location. Specifically, environmental stringency should decrease exports and increase imports of "dirty" goods. This paper estimates a gravity model to establish whether the...

This paper investigates the statistical features and the macroeconomic determinants of youth unemployment in a number of European countries. First, it explores its short and long memory properties by estimating both autoregressive and fractional integration models. This type of analysis sheds...

This paper analyses monthly hours worked in the US over the sample period 1939m1–2011m10 using a cyclical long memory model. This model, which is based on Gegenbauer processes, is characterised by autocorrelations decaying to zero cyclically and hyperbolically, with a spectral density that is...

In this paper we use fractional integration techniques to examine the degree of integration of four US stock market indices, namely the Standard and Poor, Dow Jones, Nasdaq and NYSE, at a daily frequency from January 2005 till December 2009. We analyse the weekly structure of the series and...

This paper estimates a time-varying AR-GARCH model of inflation producing measures of inflation uncertainty for the euro area, and investigates the linkages between them in a VAR framework, also allowing for the possible impact of the policy regime change associated with the start of EMU in...

This paper estimates ordered logit and probit regression models for bank ratings which also include a country index to capture country-specific variation. The empirical findings provide support to the hypothesis that the individual international bank ratings assigned by Fitch Ratings are...

This paper examines volatility spillovers from mature to emerging stock markets and tests for changes in the transmission mechanism-contagion-during turbulences in mature markets. Tri-variate GARCH-BEKK models of returns in global (mature), regional, and local markets are estimated for 41...

This paper evaluates the Morningstar mutual fund ranking system. We find that indeed higher Morningstar ratings are associated with higher returns on the portfolios including respectively five-, four-, three-, two- and one-star funds only (STAR5 to STAR1). We then perform an unconditional and...