The Volatility of European Banking Systems: A Two-Decade Study

This paper examines the trends and composition of volatility across European banking systems from January 1988 to December 2010. While there is no evidence of a long-term trend in the average level of banking system volatility, there is a change in its composition resulting from the growing importance of International and European nonfinancial components, especially in the largest banking systems. We argue that the changing composition of banking system volatility is the effect of a long-term integration process (with a growing importance of cross-border activities) that has not been influenced by the introduction of the Euro. Our results highlight the increasing vulnerability of the European banking systems to International and European shocks and an increasing likelihood of cross-border banking crises, and the need for regulatory reforms that focus on effective cross-border crisis management and resolution so as to safeguard the systemic stability of European banking in the near future.     

Performance pay and changes in U.S. labor market dynamics

A shift in the design of labor compensation occurred at around the mid-1980s in the U.S. and deals with an increased role of performance pay in driving the cyclical movements of wages. Using a DSGE model we show that this structural change accounts at least qualitatively for many observed changes in the U.S. labor market dynamics. It generates the disappearance of the procyclical response of labor productivity to non-technology shocks and the reduction of the contractionary effects of technology shocks on hours. Moreover, it is conducive to a drop in the volatility of output, a parallel increase in the volatility of wages and to changes in unconditional correlations consistent with what documented in the U.S. between the pre- and post-1984 periods.     

“Set a Sufficiently Ambitious Budget Target and Let the Automatic Stabilizers Work”. Will it Really Work in the European Monetary Union?

We examine the popular recipe in the title by means of an AD-LM-AS two-country model of the EMU, controlling for asymmetry in demand and supply shocks and in the monetary-policy transmission mechanism. Unless structural symmetry holds and symmetric shock occurs, national automatic stabilizers, even though supplemented with the common monetary policy, cannot deliver optimal stabilization in each economy. Inflation and output gaps are not closed and may be divergent in sign. Considering that a federal system of inter-regional insurance is lacking, the recipe under examination is too optimistic, while serious threat to EMU cohesion may arise. The econometric estimates we present show that existing national fiscal systems work very poorly as for the minimization, after shocks, of the dispersion of national incomes around the EMU average.     

On the benefits of party competition

We study the role of parties in a citizen-candidate repeated-elections model in which voters have incomplete information. We first identify a novel “party competition effect” in a setting with two opposing parties. Compared with “at large” selection of candidates, party selection makes office-holders more willing to avoid extreme ideological stands, and this benefits voters of all ideologies. We then allow for additional parties. With strategic voting, citizens benefit most when the only two parties receiving votes are more moderate. With sincere voting, even with three parties, extreme parties can thrive at the expense of a middle party; and whether most citizens prefer two or three parties varies with model parameters.     

Multistage bilateral bargaining model with incomplete information—A fuzzy approach

The study proposes the implementation of an intermediation model in supply chains, integrating game theory and fuzzy logic, to represent the characteristic aspects of a bilateral bargaining with incomplete information where supplier–customer relationships are indirectly managed by a third party agent.The choice of combining these theories comes out from the necessity of smoothing the peculiar elements of the two analysis tools that, in describing real situations, present many potentialities of reciprocal adaptation. The scope is to combine a formal structure that could figure out the interrelations among actors involved in a strategic decisional context, with a mathematical elaboration of natural imprecision, uncertainty and incompleteness of data and information.The model derives from the theoretic foundation of Spulber [1999. Market Microstructure. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK] and Rubinstein [1982. Perfect equilibrium in a bargaining model. Econometrica 50(1), 97–109] that, compared to the classical framework of asymmetric information and bid-spread problem by Harsanyi [1967. Games with incomplete information played by “Bayesian” players. I. The basic model. Management Science 14, 159–182], describe the process through the definition of new parameters such as bargaining power and breakdown probability. The contribution to the research is enriched by fuzzyfication process of data, considering Qi et al. [2005. Design retrieval technology of fuzzy customer requirements. In: World Congress on Mass Customization and Personalization] experiences, to build a framework that could transform inputs from the transaction, agents and market in an output that could regulate the possible concessions and the opportunity of accepting or refusing an offer.     

Combination schemes for turning point predictions

We propose new forecast combination schemes for predicting turning points of business cycles. The proposed combination schemes are based on the forecasting performances of a given set of models with the aim to provide better turning point predictions. In particular, we consider predictions generated by autoregressive (AR) and Markov-switching AR models, which are commonly used for business cycle analysis. In order to account for parameter uncertainty we consider a Bayesian approach for both estimation and prediction and compare, in terms of statistical accuracy, the individual models and the combined turning point predictions for the United States and the Euro area business cycles.     

On Central Bank Independence and the Stability of Policy Targets

It is argued that impediments to the establishment of an independent central bank arise in the presence of unstable policy targets. Changing policy targets may occur with an office-motivated policymaker. This differs from politico-economic models where targets change depending on the partisanship of the politicians in office. In the model the principal faces a tradeoff between the credibility benefits of an independent central bank and the flexibility to pursue shifts in his policy targets allowed by a regime of policy discretion. An empirical section addresses the issue of the correlation between central bank independence and the stability of policy targets.     

Measuring Value‐at‐Risk in Project Finance Transactions

Despite the remarkable importance of project finance in international financial markets, no quantitative models to measure and quantify the risk associated with a deal for the project's lenders have been developed yet. The topic has recently become crucial, since the New Basle Capital Accord gives banks a choice of whether to adopt simpler (but possibly higher) standard capital requirements or to develop internal rating models for project finance transactions. The paper proposes how Monte Carlo simulations may be used to derive a Value‐at‐Risk estimate for project finance deals and discusses the critical issues that must be considered when developing such a model.