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In a panel of European countries, we analyse paper products, sawnwood and wood panels consumption data. With this object, we use a classical demand model where national consumption depends on real GDP and real prices. In contrast to previous panel estimations in the literature, we highlight non-stationarity time series which can lead to spurious regressions. We explicitly take into account the issue by using recent panel cointegration techniques. Cointegration is present for printing paper and fibreboard, though less clear cut for other products. Then we estimate demand elasticities and find that GDP elasticities are significantly lower than estimates from the literature. Finally, we simulate the implications of modified demand elasticities by using a partial equilibrium model of the forest sector. For most products, changes in elasticities would lead to lower projected demand and lower prices over a 20-year time horizon. Lower demand for solid wood and wood fibre would lead to less tensions with fuel wood- and wood-based chemical markets. In a context of rising interest for renewable bio-based products, updated long-term demand models contribute to the analysis of the forest sector’s sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical investigation on the determinants of workplace accidents across Europe and focuses on the extent to which production-system characteristics (employment sectoral risk, size of firms, temporary contracts), business cycle and socio-economic factors (GDP, level of investments, unemployment, education) and other territorial controls (crime index) might account for cross-country heterogeneity. We use Eurostat data, and our panel is composed of 27 European countries over the period 2010–2018. Implementing different functional forms and estimation methodologies (pooled OLS, panel fixed and random effects models, system-GMM and semiparametric fixed effects model), we find robust evidence that productive-system structural characteristics, business cycle controls and the other territorial variables are effective in explaining European cross-country heterogeneity. Moreover, we find evidence of a nonlinear relationship between GDP and occupational accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate house price misalignments and how they affect the real economy. We estimate the long-term relationship between house prices and the fundamentals that determine long-term house prices for a panel of European countries with dynamic OLS, using data from 2005–2018. We find that income has been the main driver of fundamental house prices in all countries, while the supply of dwellings has calmed the rise in house prices in some of them. We calculate house price misalignments, which are deviations of house prices from the fundamental value, and we employ them in the growth model. The results of the growth regression indicate that house price imbalances amplify business cycles in the short term, but in the long term house price overvaluations slow economic growth down. The findings imply that it is crucial to take measures to stabilize housing cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the effectiveness of risk sharing mechanisms in Europe by breaking down the factor income components into their sub-components, and aims to further examine whether financial integration and international portfolio diversification boosts or dampens risk sharing. Using a panel of European countries, we compare the years before and after the 2008 financial crisis. We extend the literature by properly taking into account the heterogeneity (in both country and time dimensions) in the panel through new econometric models. Our results show that financial income has become a major channel of risk sharing in recent years and that a higher integration in the bond and equity markets significantly improves risk sharing in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines empirically the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on economic sentiment in Europe. We focus on the EU-27 countries plus the UK during the period September 2019 to November 2020, before the initiation of Covid-19 vaccination, using data from Eurostat's Business and Consumers Surveys. Panel data estimates indicate that the pandemic has generated strongly declining sentiments among economic agents in Europe through the slowdown of the economy due to the imposed restrictions on movement and other controls. The risk of infection-induced mortality has played a separate role in generating pessimism directly from human psychology. The emergency social protection measures launched by governments have, on average, been effective in reducing market pessimism. However, we provide evidence suggesting that policymakers should focus more on targeted support to poor households and other disadvantaged groups of the population. Overall, our results suggest that certain structural features of economies, including poverty exposure, a large informal sector, and a high percentage of vulnerable employment as well as limited financial and informational openness, are factors that may intensify the severity of the adverse economic consequences of a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Florida's seminal work on the 'creative class' there is a great deal of interest concerning whether creativity, as an input, is important for regional growth. Answering this question requires developing a production framework that can distinguish creativity from other inputs. With data from Europe, this paper integrates the concept of information and communications technology (ICT) and the creative class into a theoretical production function. Findings reveal that not only is there a positive and interactive relationship between creative workers and ICT, but the combination of creative workers and ICT leads to higher levels of GVA growth. Moreover, creative workers were found to have a larger impact on growth in comparison with traditional human capital measures (i.e. graduates). Thus, findings from this research suggest that the creative class should not only pay attention to socio-economic preferences of individuals, but it must include wider social resources, such as ICT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the Great Recession affected the gender disparity in material and social deprivation in Europe. We propose multidimensional non-monetary indexes of absolute and relative (i.e. using peer comparisons) deprivations estimated on data from the European Quality of Life Survey for the waves 2007 and 2011. We find that the Great Recession decreased gender disparity over all the dimensions of deprivations. By applying a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we estimate that this decline of gender gap has depended on a reduction of the difference in characteristics between genders that has more than offset an increase of gender discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the trend and the author name-ordering rule in finance publication using the publication records of 21 core finance journals during the period from 1990 to 2004. We empirically model the underlying factors that affect the alphabetical ordering rule among multi-authored finance articles. We find that the choice of alphabetical ordering is based on the quality of the article, institutional heterogeneity, team size and cultural factors. The central argument rests upon the need to signal and the importance of signalling within the context of bargaining behaviour among coauthors. The probability of choosing alphabetical name ordering rule is associated with high article quality, higher ranked institutions, smaller research team and the presence of European authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines whether or not evidence is consistent with convergence of the Okun's Law coefficient (OLC) among several alternative groupings of European economies. A two-step empirical strategy is employed. The first step obtains rolling regression estimates of the OLC for individual European countries. The second step examines how the cross-country variance of the OLC evolves over the decade until 2002 in the selected country groupings. Evidence is found consistent with convergence of the OLC among northern European countries, and among countries with centralized wage bargaining, but an absence of convergence in other country groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at assessing whether dualism represents a significant source of the aggregate labour productivity convergence observed across the European regions in the 1980s. We use a model of the dual economy based on the work of Dixit (Oxford Economic Papers, 22, 229-34, 1970), and Mas-Colell and Razin (Oxford Economic Papers, 25, 72-79, 1973) to obtain hypotheses to be tested in cross-region growth regressions. We use aggregate and sectoral data for 109 territorial units from 1980 to 1990. Our cross-section results are consistent with the major predictions of the dual model. Ignoring dualism as a source of convergence could therefore lead to inaccurate interpretations of the relative roles played by each of the forces behind the process, and to inexact assessments of what actions should be taken- if any- by the European regional policy to help the process become more pervasive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the sources of persistent interest rate differentials vis-a-vis Germany that have existed in Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. In a target zone system like the ERM, interest rate differentials mainly reflect devaluation expectations, which are measured here by raw 1-month Euromarket interest rate differentials, drift-adjusted 1-month differentials, and differentials in long-term government bond yields. The role of a large set of fundamental macroeconomic variables that may have affected these devaluation expectations is investigated within a vector autoregressive (VAR) setting, by means of Granger-causality tests, impulse-response functions and variance decompositions. We find no evidence that fundamentals are more relevant to drift-adjusted devaluation risk than for unadjusted interest rate differentials. A significant impact of inflation, budget deficits, and unemployment becomes evident for almost all ERM-participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital is supposed to be an important factor for innovation and economic development. However, the long-run impact of human capital on current innovation and economic development is still a black box, in particular at the regional level. Therefore, this paper makes the link between the past and the present. Using a large new dataset on regional human capital and other factors in the 19th and 20th century, we find that past regional human capital is a key factor explaining current regional disparities in innovation and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The definition of price stability adopted by the ECB has recently been criticized in the literature, particularly for being unable to fully anchor inflation expectations and creating a deflation risk. In the paper empirical evidence is provided against these claims. Despite the unfavourable macroeconomic conditions for the euro area since 2001, monetary policy management has lead to the setting of the policy rate at levels compatible with trend inflation (the long-run inflation forecast) in the range 1–3%, and therefore without affecting negatively the inflation outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past two decades the wage gap between high and low skill labour has increased more in the USA than in many European countries. In this paper, the correspondence between occupation and education is used to construct aggregates of skill supply, skill demand and unemployment by skill group that are comparable across countries. Using individual data for years 1983–1994, it is found that the relative demand for skilled labour has increased to a similar extent in the USA and in Europe and that wage inequality remained low in Europe partly because the European relative supply of skill increased much faster than in the USA, and partly because European relative wages were rigid, which caused an increase in unemployment among the low-skilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper sectoral production functions are estimated with a two digit disaggregation for eight European countries corresponding to the period 1978-1992, distinguishing between internal economies of scale and intersectoral external effects. In order to avoid the possibility that the regressions, carried out by way of panel data techniques, are spurious, the integration order of each variable has been identified using unit root. Similarly, the Hausman procedure has been applied to test the exogeneity of the variables and determine whether the most appropriate estimations should be SUR or three stage least squares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether there has been an improvement in and convergence of productive efficiency across European banking markets since the creation of the Single Internal Market. Using efficiency measures derived from DEA estimation, the determinants of European bank efficiency are evaluated using the Tobit regression model approach. The established literature on modelling the determinants of bank efficiency is then extended by recognizing the problem of the inherent dependency of DEA efficiency scores when used in regression analysis. To overcome the dependency problem, a bootstrapping technique is applied. Overall, the results suggest that since the EU's Single Market Programme there has been a small improvement in bank efficiency levels, although there is little evidence to suggest that these have converged. The results also suggest that inference on the determinants of bank efficiency drawn from non-bootstrapped regression analysis may be biased and misleading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of trade and technology in the European case is assessed. A framework is developed which incorporates employment effects of (i) export expansion (ii) import competition and (iii) labour-saving productivity improvements. In this context, evidence is found for the hypothesis that international trade induces adjustments in technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of employment security on labour demand. The approach taken is to estimate a dynamic labour demand function that allows for the effect of changes in a measure of employment security derived from surveys of employers. The estimation uses panel data on employment (both in terms of the total number of employees and total hours worked) for seven European countries for the period 1981–1994. The results suggest that employment security can have significant effects in slowing down the dynamic adjustment of labour demand. The paper also finds some (less robust) evidence that employment security can increase the long run level of labour demand in terms of total hours, but not the number of persons employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates pricing to market behaviour using data for European auto exports. The empirical analysis uses forward instead of spot exchange rates. Cross-country and cross-product analyses reveal that pricing behaviour depends mainly on the class of product, while the country of origin and destination appears as less important. Furthermore, the data do not usually reject the hypothesis of a symmetric response of export prices to depreciations and appreciations of the exporter's currency. Finally, although the point estimates confirm the combined influence of the business cycle and the direction of the exchange rate movements on pricing to market in most cases, formal tests seldom provide statistical significance for this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the issue of cost efficiency for eight main European railroads in a sample period of 17 years. Measures of technical and allocative efficiency are obtained from a stochastic cost frontier model, with minimal cost described by a translog cost system. In the model, the cost of allocative inefficiency is estimated simultaneously from the shares' errors, whereas technical inefficiency is modelled by a (half normal) positive departure from the cost frontier. Results show a negligible effect of allocative inefficiency on firms' costs, whereas the cost of technical inefficiency appears to be significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]