Search results

National borders are a hurdle to the expansion of the open economy. Integration today remains imperfect because national borders translate into trading costs, including differences in monetary regimes. Political borders shelter many goods and services from external competition and, consequently, represent a critical exogenous force in the integration process. Small economies face thicker borders than large economies. Regional trade arrangements have softened or, in some cases, pushed outward national borders, but in the process new borders have emerged. Borders affect also finance and monies. While the speed of financial integration suggests currency consolidation and a decline in the ratio of independent monies to sovereign nations, the formation of multilateral monetary unions (MUs) pushes the ratio toward unity.

A growing amount of micro-data analyses has highlighted the importance of information trails, such as generated by card transactions, for improving tax compliance. Yet, time series evidence indicating a positive effect of card payments on VAT revenue performance has been scarce. This paper revisits the question of the effect of card payments on VAT revenue by using annual and quarterly panel data for the 19 euro area member states, covering the period 2000–2016.

A panel VECM is employed in order to address endogeneity issues and to account for common stochastic trends, which, is shown to be crucial in revealing the anticipated positive effect of card use on the performance of VAT.

The analysis confirms that a higher share of card payments in private consumption increases VAT revenue and the efficiency of revenue collection. Higher gains are estimated for countries with above average self-employment.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, to our knowledge it provides the first confirmation of the well-established literature on information trails using aggregate macroeconomic time series in a multi-country setting. Second, it has very timely policy implications, as low-hanging fruit are identified in euro-area economies with much to gain from strengthening the credibility of their fiscal performance, such as Greece.

This paper investigates the long‐ and short‐run determinants of aggregate private savings in Greece employing data over the period 1961‐2000. The long‐run savings function is estimated based on an extended life‐cycle hypothesis taking into account the economic and demographic developments during this period. A long‐run saving function sensitive to fertility changes, old dependency ratio, real interest rate, liquidity and public finances is found to exist and the importance of short‐run deviations is presented using vector error‐correction model estimation. The empirical evidence suggests the existence of a stable long‐run savings function in Greece both in the long‐ and short‐run periods and the policy implications of such a relationship are presented.

This paper attempts to evaluate whether the set of NAFTA countries (the U.S., Canada and Mexico) should adopt the same currency. The theoretical basis for the paper is the optimal currency area theory which suggests that countries or regions that experience similar business cycles can gain advantages in adopting the same currency. The statistical methodology used in the paper to evaluate whether states or provinces have similar business cycle correlations is model-based cluster analysis, a recently-developed method to group data in the applied statistics literature.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the specific “shareholder's” concept of transparency.

It considers that indirect securities holding systems limit the degree of “post-trading” transparency. The main concern is that an adverse effect of globalized capital markets is that the actual shareholders are not registered in the official registries and registrations are effected in the name of intermediaries acting on their behalf. It further considers that new EU legislative action should be taken to address the legal issues of securities holdings as a key parameter for EU integration.

A new architecture of the securities holding system is proposed in this paper to be adopted at the EU level on the basis of the analyzed direct registration, i.e. registration of all the actual shareholders in the registries. It is considered that this architecture will promote securities holdings transparency for all systems, either direct or indirect, and hence enhance investors' protection and financial confidence in the markets. Focusing on the financial crisis of the recent years, it is worthy of note that a key parameter in solving this crisis problem could be considered not only the imposition of more possible regulatory requirements on all financial players but also the improvement credibility of the markets by making their operation more transparent. Direct registration could be defined as a method of making the markets more transparent in this regard.

In the light of the financial crisis of 2007-2009, this is one of the first studies, which clearly argues that direct registration could be considered the appropriate method of making the financial markets more transparent. Therefore, it calls for the EU legal intervention should therefore be accelerated. By delaying improvement in the efficiency of the available infrastructures mainly by utilizing all the advantages that technology offers, the markets accept the additional cost of higher risk coverage.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of variability of empirical results of several financial contagion studies, taking into account the role of financial markets, data sets and the applied definitions and methods that may explain the variability of empirical evidence.

The authors used qualitative analysis of published research materials about previous financial crises and analyzed the variability of empirical results of around 75 studies of financial contagion, taking into account the particularities of financial markets, data sets and tests methods.

The results of the analysis show that empirical studies provide heterogeneous results depending on applied definitions and methods, as well as chosen crises, destination countries and financial indices. Summing up all the relevant empirical findings the results supporting the contagion hypothesis are in clear dominance, but taking into account differences in definitions and testing methodologies the research did not reveal clear results as to which evidence dominates or should dominate.

The authors conclude that solely qualitative analysis of published research materials about previous financial crises does not give sufficient information to elaborate proper management measures to prevent serious consequences of financial crises. The authors propose that it is possible to obtain a more adequate picture of financial contagion by using a meta‐analysis, which the authors are planning to do in future studies.

The paper provides information about some reasons that explain the variability of the results that are presented in the empirical studies about financial contagion. This information can be used for elaborating policy proposals and regulations that can help alleviate possible negative consequences of financial contagion. The paper shows the way for future articles summarising financial contagion.

The study sums up previous findings on the field of financial contagion and shows the insufficiency of the traditional literature review to accomplish that task.