Capital mobility is helpful to cope with the loss of adjustment instruments in EMU. High capital mobility in the sense of Feldstein and Horioka (FH) can limit the negative consequences of shocks affecting the saving capacity of an economy in the Eurozone. It is the aim of this paper to assess...

A rational financial constitution of the EU should be able to fulfil redistributive objectives at minimum costs. The present financial system of the Community is not compatible with this requirement. After the decisions of the European Council in Berlin on the Agenda 2000 the fundamental flaw of...

With the introduction of the Euro, a single European money market has emerged. Further wholesale financial markets are considered to be highly integrated within the European Union. However, integration in retail financial markets is less advanced. For measuring financial market integration this...

In this analysis, the informational content of central bank rhetoric is assessed based on the experience with the ECB since 1999. Among the ECB?s communication channels we focus on the monthly press conferences. Based on a counting of certain signal words we construct a wording indicator...

In this paper we employ a time series econometric framework to explore the structural determinants of the spread between the euro overnight rate and the ECB?s policy rate (EONIA spread) aiming to explain the widening of the EONIA spread in the period from mid-2004 to mid-2006. We mainly estimate...

Lending and borrowing interest rates are often slow to adjust to changing capital market conditions. This paper argues that national differences of the pass-through speed in the EU can be regarded as a retail-oriented indicator of financial integration. Based on an ECB database the speed of...

We estimate the effect of internet penetration on retail bank margins in the euro area. Based on an adapted Baumol [1982] type contestability model, we argue that the internet has reduced sunk costs and therefore increased contestability in retail banking. We test this conjecture by estimating...