Does deflation affect household spending? The case of the Netherlands

This article investigates the impact of deflation on real private consumption and residential investment by Dutch households during the 1980–2013 period. We estimate theoretically founded consumption and investment equations and show that a fall in the general price level significantly negatively affects both growth in real consumption and residential investment. The impact on residential investment is more delayed, but stronger.     

Bond market and stock market integration in Europe: a smooth transition approach

This article investigates whether there has been a structural increase in financial market integration in nine European countries and the US in the period 1980 to 2003. We employ a GARCH model with a smoothly time-varying correlation to estimate the date of change and the speed of the transition between the low and high correlation regimes. Our test produces strong evidence of greater comovement across the board for both stock markets and government bond markets. Dates of change and speeds of adjustment vary widely across country linkages. Stock market integration is a more gradual process than bond market integration. The impact of European monetary union (EMU) is rather limited, as it has mainly affected the timing of bond market correlation gains (but hardly their size) and has had little discernible effect on stock market integration.