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In this paper the debate on purchasing power parity (PPP) is considered by providing results with disaggregated price data from European countries. The disaggregation of the price data is important because it allows for the consideration of goods that are likely tradable (e.g., fruits) with goods that are not tradable (e.g., hotel rooms). The European focus is important because these results are able to shed light on the effect of the type of exchange rate regime, member of exchange rate mechanism (ERM) or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the nature of the relationship between output and stock prices, and consumption and stock prices, with respect to the different financial structures that exist primarily in the European Union (EU). Evidence is found of a long-run relationship for both relationships, with the exception of Germany and to an extent France, which is argued is due to their bank dominated financial systems. Kalman Filter estimates reveal that both relationships have increased in strength, although little evidence is found of any convergence in the strength of the relationship across the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the determinants of dispersion of economic issue mentions in European party manifestos. We examined three main economic domains (governmental control of the economy, free market capitalism and support for the welfare state) as consequences of globalization forces, economic conditions, partisanship and electoral turnout. Employing aggregate-level Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) data from legislative elections in 15 European countries from 1970 to 2010, we confirm that parties hold a common view of the salience of economic control of the state as a consequence of globalization pressure and economic growth levels. Partisanship of the cabinets (regardless of the political orientation) counteracted issue salience concentration in the welfare domain. Government size favoured dispersion in the free market realm. Our results do not indicate clear homogenization of parties’ economic messages in elections over the last 40 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is the first that applies a new measure of competition, the Boone indicator, to the banking industry. This approach is able to measure competition of bank market segments, such as the loan market, whereas many well-known measures of competition can consider the entire banking market only. Like most other model-based measures, this approach ignores differences in bank product quality and design, as well as the attractiveness of innovations. We measure competition on the lending markets in the five major EU countries as well as, for comparison, the UK, the US and Japan. Our findings indicate that over the period 1994-2004 the US had the most competitive loan market, whereas overall loan markets in Germany and Spain were among the best competitive in the EU. The Netherlands occupied a more intermediate position, whereas in Italy competition declined significantly over time. The French, Japanese and UK loan markets were generally less competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]