This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms' profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms' performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain...

This paper describes a machine learning technique to timely identify cases of individual bank financial distress. Our work represents the first attempt in the literature to develop an early warning system specifically for small European banks. We employ a machine learning technique, and build a...

We investigate the effect of sovereign stress and of unconventional monetary policy on small firms' financing patterns during the euro area debt crisis. We find that after the crisis started, firms in stressed countries were more likely to be credit rationed, both in the quantity and in the...

The post-2008 period in the euro area was characterised by sharp dispersion in borrowing costs faced by firms, across both countries and firm types. This dispersion was an important manifestation of the "financial fragmentation" which hampered the smooth transmission of accommodative monetary...

This paper analyses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic shock on small open economies in a monetary union with an application to the euro area. Accounting for a high degree of openness and a strong dependence on intra and extra union trade, we focus on the size and the direction of...

In this paper we investigate the impact of the euro integration process on the drivers of FDI inflows. We show theoretically and empirically that the single currency alters the drivers of FDI inflows across its Member States. Estimating bilateral gravity models of FDI inflows into euro area...

This paper shows that initial cross-country institutional differences can explain to a substantial extent the relative GDP performance of European countries since 1995, after controlling for the initial level of GDP per capita and government debt. It shows that improving the quality of...

We test whether two key elements of the EU and Euro Area economic governance framework, the Stability and Growth Pact and the Lisbon Strategy, have had any impact on macroeconomic outcomes. We test this proposition using a difference-in-difference approach on a panel of over 30 countries, some...

We develop a horizontal R&D growth model that allows us to investigate the different channels through which financial reforms affect R&D investment and patent activity. First, a “micro” reform that abolishes barriers to entry in the banking sector produces a straightforward result: a...

Using new quarterly narrative evidence, this paper examines the macroeconomic impact of reforms of unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the euro area from a Bayesian narrative panel VAR. The approach complements existing micro-econometric evidence by aligning...