Military spending,economic growth and investment: a disaggregated analysis by income group

Empirical Economics - Employing a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) methodology, the paper addresses the nexus between military expenditures and two key macroeconomic variables, namely growth...     

Stock markets and terrorist attacks: Comparative evidence from a large and a small capitalization market

An expanding body of literature has investigated the economic impact of terrorist attacks. A part of this literature has focused on financial markets. We examine three research questions: whether markets' reactions to terrorism have changed through time; whether market size and maturity determine reactions, and whether reactions depends upon either the type of targets or the perpetrators of the attack. To this effect, a large – the London stock exchange – and a small – the Athens stock exchange – capitalization markets are used as the vehicles for the empirical investigation. Results from an event study methodology as well as from conditional volatility models suggest that size and maturity as well as specific attributes of terrorist incidents are possible determinants of markets' reactions.     

Dynamic volatility and external security related shocks: The case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper analyses the impact of exogenous national security related shocks on the time-varying volatility structure of the Greek stock market. Alternative autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are estimated, in order to identify the best fit that adequately describes return volatility behavior, testing symmetric as well as asymmetric innovation responses. An external national security related shock factor is included as well as a military crisis dummy, in order to depict possible implications for the conditional variance. The empirical findings appear to support a statistically significant impact of both national security related factors on the Athens stock market returns.     

European financial crisis and bank productivity: evidence from Eastern European Countries

The paper examines the productivity levels of the largest banks operating in the Eastern European countries over the period of the ongoing European financial crisis. Specifically, the analysis covers the periods of U.S. subprime crisis, the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. By adopting a fully nonparametric framework, it provides a probabilistic version of a directional input-oriented Malmquist productivity index alongside with its main decomposition. The results from the analysis suggest that banks have faced a deterioration of their productivity levels between the examined periods. It is evident that during the initiation of European sovereign debt crisis, the banks have weakened their ability to utilize efficiently their inputs of production and their ability to realize scale economies.     

The nexus between exchange rates and stock markets: evidence from the euro-dollar rate and composite European stock indices using rolling analysis

Both the goods market hypothesis and the portfolio balance theory, suggest a nexus between exchange rates and stock prices, albeit with a different direction of causality. This paper, using daily data, takes up the issue of the linkages between stock prices and exchange rates in the case of the euro-dollar rate and two composite European stock market indices: the FTSE Eurotop 300 and FTSE eTX All-Share Index. It addresses the causal ordering issue between the two markets using rolling unit root, cointegration and Granger causality tests. This methodological approach allows for the emergence of a clearer picture of the possible dynamic linkages between exchange rates and stock prices. The empirical results provide evidence of time-varying causality between the two markets.     

Dynamic European stock market convergence: Evidence from rolling cointegration analysis in the first euro-decade

The introduction of the euro epitomizes European economic integration. This paper assesses the dynamic process of convergence among four major European stock markets in the first euro-decade. Using tests that allow for endogenously determined breaks in cointegrating relationships and rolling cointegration analysis, we show that although some convergence has been taking place over time, it is very much an ongoing process. There is also evidence that the German and French markets appear to be the ones with a higher degree of convergence while the dominant position of Germany within the eurozone seems to be (re)affirmed by tests conducted herein.     

Discrimination and job search theories for black British young men

The paper examines empirically the relationship between government revenues and expenditures in four European countries: Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. In relative terms all four may be considered as the poorest members of the European Union. Yet, they present a fairly diverse picture as far as their macroeconomic performance and fiscal position is concerned. The empirical findings from cointegration and causality tests that are reported here indicate that in the case of Greece and Ireland tax and spending decisions are taken simultaneously by the fiscal authority, the tax-and-spend hypothesis is supported in the case of Spain, while absence of any causal ordering between government expenditure and tax revenues has been established for Portugal.     

Environmentally Responsible and Conventional Market Indices’ Reaction to Natural and Anthropogenic Adversity: A Comparative Analysis

Using data collected at two phases, this study examines why and how ethical leadership behavior influences employees’ evaluations of organization-focused justice, i.e., procedural justice and distributive justice. By proposing ethical leaders as moral agents of the organization, we build up the linkage between ethical leadership behavior and the above two types of organization-focused justice. We further suggest trust in organization as a key mediating mechanism in the linkage. Our findings indicate that ethical leadership behavior engenders employees’ trust in their employing organization, which in turn promotes their justice perceptions toward the organization. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested.     

DEFENCE AND NON‐DEFENCE SPENDING IN THE USA: STIMULI TO ECONOMIC GROWTH? COMPARATIVE FINDINGS FROM A SEMIPARAMETRIC APPROACH

Given its significant policy implications, the nexus between public expenditures and economic growth has been the subject of an extensive and often emotive theoretical and empirical debate. In this paper, a semiparametric model is used to explore the link between GDP and defence and non‐defence government spending in the USA over the period 1929–2009. Evidence reported herein indicates that the latter represents a greater stimulus vis‐à‐vis the former.     

Does Terrorism Affect the Stock‐Bond Covariance? Evidence from European Countries

Using daily stock and bond returns data from four European countries—France, Germany, Spain, and Great Britain—that have been the victims of significant terrorist activity, this study addresses the issue of whether transnational and/or domestic terrorist attacks have affected in any significant manner the time‐varying stock–bond covariance, their returns, and their variances. Stock and bond markets can be influenced and determined not only by the usual array of macroeconomic factors but also by security shocks, such as a terrorist incident, that have the potential to affect investors' sentiment and portfolio allocation decisions. The issue at hand is addressed using a VAR(p)‐GARCH(1,1)‐in‐mean model, and the results reported herein indicate that terrorist attacks trigger a flight‐to‐safety effect primarily in France and Germany and to a smaller degree in Great Britain and Spain.