The role of financial development on the underground economy in regards to Europe’s 2020 strategy

This paper attempts to investigate the relationships between development in the financial sector and the size of the underground economy in European Union countries. Our aim is to investigate the role of financial sector development when it comes to the size of the underground economy, as well as how financial development aids in meeting the growth objectives of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’. Panel data analysis will be conducted for the period 2004–2017 in order to examine the effects of financial sector development on the size of the underground economy. The main findings of this paper suggest that financial development has a significantly reducing effect on the size of the underground economy. In conclusion, development within the financial sector significantly lessens underground economic activity in the European Union. With further development of the financial sector, underground economies will not be an obstacle for the fulfilment of the cohesion and growth objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy.     

希腊国债危机对欧洲银行业信息披露的动态影响

本文探讨了希腊国债危机对银行信息披露的动态影响。经过对173家欧洲银行2009和2011年年度报告的数据统计,分析显示:自危机爆发以来,欧洲银行增加了其年度报告的长度,尤其是年度报告中的风险管理部分的长度。经过实证分析还发现,不管是银行的年度报告还是其风险管理报告长度的增加都与银行的资本成本所受到的外源性冲击相联系。而这种对资本成本的外源性冲击主要是希腊危机引起的。最后研究还发现,2011年风险管理报告部分的增加在一定程度上缓解了之前银行资本成本所收到的冲击,而年度报告的增加与此没有明显的关联。     

In landscape management all of us have something to say. A holistic method for landscape Preservability evaluation in a Mediterranean region

Landscape assessment methods have traditionally valued the landscape through a panel of experts with little or no participation of the population. However, after the adoption of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), the perception and the participation of the population has played an increasingly important role in landscape evaluation and planning. In this regard, the goal of this paper is to develop a model able to evaluate and integrate both the objective and subjective landscape factors into a new concept: the Preservability. This model, as well as selecting and classifying the landscape attributes according to the bio-geographic features of the study area i.e., Ricote Valley (Region of Murcia, Spain), includes two online surveys: one to assess the populatiońs landscape preferences and the other to obtain the specific weight of each objective and subjective landscape factor from a panel of experts. These landscape factors were incorporated into a GIS. To obtain the best model, the Preservability was assessed from three different approaches: objective, objective-weighted and weighted. The final results demonstrate how the Preservability weighted method returns different thresholds appropriate to the landscape attributes, the population’s perceptual preference and the protected areas. The different thresholds allows for priority areas to be identified for protection, as well as the adoption of appropriate management and planning strategies according to the landscapes characteristics, current state and uniqueness.     

Testing the fire-sale FDI hypothesis for the European financial crisis

Using a panel of corporate transactions in 27 EU countries from 1999 to 2012, we investigate the impact of the financial crisis on the market for corporate assets. In particular, we test the ‘fire-sale FDI’ hypothesis by analyzing the number of cross-border transactions, the price of corporate assets and the impact of credit and macroeconomic conditions. According to the fire-sale FDI hypothesis, countries affected by a crisis attract foreign buyers selling assets at a discount. We find a dampening effect of the crisis on cross-border transactions in all EU countries. Although countries with higher sovereign default risk and lower economic demand attracted more foreign buyers in the crisis, lower domestic credit is associated with less cross-border transactions. Corporate assets in crisis countries are cheaper, particularly if domestic credit is low; however, these findings are not limited to the crisis period. This pattern is strikingly different from the East Asian and Latin American financial crises. Overall, we find little evidence for ‘fire-sale FDI’ suggesting an integrated European market without significant frictions.     

The Gendered Nature of Poverty in the EU: Individualized versus Collective Poverty Measures

Due to the adoption of the household as a unit of analysis, researchers have failed to identify accurate measures of women's income poverty. This study proposes an individualized measure of European poverty to highlight gender differences in the economic crisis. Employing data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for the period 2007–12, it compares the household-based at-risk-of-poverty rate (ARPR) and the individualized financial dependency rate (FDR). The study shows that the gender gap in poverty in Europe is considerably higher when computed through FDR. Indeed, since the ARPR constitutes a proxy of the household's average conditions, it levels down gender inequalities within the household and also variations in individuals’ incomes over time. Only more detailed data collection on intrahousehold resource sharing will possibly allow the development of more precise and realistic indicators of women's and men's risks of poverty and financial dependency.     

The Geography of Innovation in China and India

The BRICS countries in general, and China and India in particular, are now widely regarded as the areas of the world likely to challenge the economic leadership of the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). A large part of this challenge will come from rapid technological catch‐up by China and India. Yet, despite a recent rise in interest, there is limited knowledge about how and where innovation takes place in these two leading emerging countries and to what extent the Chinese and Indian territorial systems of innovation differ from those in the EU or the US. In this article we explore the geography of innovation in China and India, concentrating on understanding key territorial‐level innovation trends by country, region and technology field, using the US and the EU as benchmarks. We find significant contrasts between the geography of innovation in China and India and that of the US and the EU. First, the degree of concentration of innovative activities in both countries is extremely high. Levels of agglomeration of innovation in the coastal provinces of China, as well as in Delhi and the South of India, significantly exceed the levels of agglomeration found in the USA and the EU. Secondly, China has witnessed a more rapid increase in the degree of concentration of innovation than India. We posit that the differences in the geography of innovation between, on the one hand, China and India and, on the other hand, between these countries and the developed world are rooted in different institutional settings, different systems of innovation and different national innovation strategies.     

Are EU trade preferences really effective? An impact evaluation assessment of the Southern Mediterranean Countries’ case

This work assesses the causal impact of the EU trade preferences granted to the Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMCs) in agriculture and fishery products over the period 2004–2014. It overcomes some of the weaknesses of previous assessments and presents several methodological improvements. Firstly, it relies on a continuous treatment – i.e. preferential margins – to capture the ‘average treatment effect’ of trade preferences, rather than on a binary treatment based on dummy variables. Secondly, it uses highly disaggregated data at sectoral level in order to evaluate properly the preferential treatment. Thirdly, it applies a non-parametric matching technique for continuous treatment – specifically, a generalized propensity score matching. The results show, on the one hand, that the impact of the EU preferences is positive and significant on SMCs trade and is better evaluated using impact evaluation techniques. On the other hand, they demonstrate that the relationship between preferences and trade flows is asymmetric and warn against the risk of providing too much of a good thing. These results raise important issues for policy-making. First, they demonstrate that raising the level of preferences is not the solution to foster the SMCs trade towards EU. Second, that the policy-makers should put more emphasis on complementary factors other than trade barriers.     

Country Differences in Material Deprivation in Europe

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro‐level perspective) and country‐specific factors (macro‐level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually‐oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country‐specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country‐specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between‐country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual‐level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP.     

Factors of trade in Europe

We analyze how a set of determinants affect trade among European countries over the period 1992–2008. The factors encompass variables from the areas of geography, culture, institutions, infrastructure, and trade direction. Trade is analyzed for four types of goods: primary goods, parts and components, capital goods, and consumer goods. For each type of good we also distinguish its definition in terms of flows, intensive margin, and extensive margin. Methodologically, we first derive country-pair fixed effects over all possible pairs of export–import partners, and in the second stage we relate fixed effects with a set of influential factors. We show (i) the intuitive and varying effects of geographical, cultural, and institutional factors; (ii) the beneficial effects of soft and hard infrastructure; and (iii) the key importance of trade between old and new EU members.     

Does bank ownership affect lending behavior? Evidence from the Euro area

We analyze the differences in lending policies across banks characterized by different types of ownership, using micro-level data on Euro area banks during the period 1999–2011 to detect possible variations in bank lending supply responses to changes in monetary policy. Our results identify a general difference between stakeholder and shareholder banks: following a monetary policy contraction, stakeholder banks decrease their loan supply to a lesser extent than shareholder banks. A detailed analysis of the effect among stakeholder banks reveals that cooperative banks continued to smooth the impact of tighter monetary policy on their lending during the crisis period (2008–2011), whereas savings banks did not. Stakeholder banks’ propensity to smooth their lending cycles suggests that their presence in the economy has the potential to reduce credit supply volatility.