The banking sectors of the European Union have faced numerous challenges in the past decade. With regard to old EU members, as a result of the Second European Banking Directive and the Single European Passport the speed of deregulation accelerated, and with the elimination or lowering of barriers market-entry costs substantially decreased, favouring competition and the creation of a Unified Ban...

Comparing the current economic situation of the internal markets of the US and the EU, two things are noticeable. On the one hand, the EU is conducting massive regional policy programmes (notably with their Structural Funds) to foster economic cohesion among the 27 nations belonging to the single European market while in the US with its 50 federal states such policies play a rather subordinate ...

On a pan-European basis, industrial property values have only increased marginally following the global financial crisis. Yet, despite continued financial pressures in the region, Prologis research indicates the recovery of industrial values in Europe should continue at a stronger pace compared with the other real estate sectors. Cyclical factors, including a deficit in Class-A space and attrac...

This paper examines the level of integration of European stock markets. We estimate a conditional asset pricing model, which allows for a time-varying degree of integration that measures the importance of EU-wide risk relative to country-speci c risk. The model accounts for intra-European currency risk, time-varying quantities and prices of risk. The results indicate that the degree of integrat...

The objective of this study is to determine the dynamics and contemporaneous interactions of Euro zone stock markets at the country and economic sector level. Overall test results have revealed the time-varying nature of the financial market integration process. Promoted by the anticipation and subsequently the formation of the currency union Euro zone stock markets became more integrated betwe...

Using a detailed data set of prices of consumer goods in European cities from 1990 to Spring 2003, we investigate the question of whether the introduction of the euro in January 1999 increased integration of consumer markets as reflected by consumer prices. In fact, we find no tendency for prices to converge after January 1999. This finding holds even when we control for a number of factors tha...

We analyse the determinants of stock market integration among EU member states for the period 1999–2007. First, we apply bivariate DCC-MGARCH models to extract dynamic conditional correlations between European stock markets, which are then explained by interest rate spreads, exchange rate risk, market capitalisation, and business cycle synchronisation in a pooled OLS model. By grouping the coun...