This paper examines the short-run nonlinear relationship between digitalization and economic synchronization in the European Union (EU), over 2013–2022. The analysis employs the Half-Panel Jackknife (HPJ) Granger non-causality framework of Juodis et al. (2021), coupled with a corrected synchronization coefficient as proposed by Cerqueira and Martins (2009). The study also incorporates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The key results reveal a robust U-shaped short-term relationship, indicating that digitalization initially increases divergence but enhances synchronization after reaching sufficient digital maturity. The analysis shows that this pattern holds for both highly and less digitalized countries, although the initial divergence effect is stronger among less digitalized economies. Further evidence indicates that Eurozone membership strengthens the synchronization effects of digitalization, while private-sector digitalization emerges as the main transmission channel. The findings highlight a bidirectional relationship between digital transformation and economic synchronization, emphasizing the importance of digital capabilities, institutional conditions, and economic integration in achieving European convergence.
Gender differences in financial decisions can affect wealth accumulation, investment strategies, and retirement planning. The present paper analyzes the relationship between gender, financial literacy, and risk perception, combining statistical methods and PROMETHEE II. Findings have shown that the way people react to losses depends on financial literacy, while the degree of risk the individual thinks they can tolerate is linked to both financial literacy and financial behavior, including overconfidence mechanisms. With respect to gender, a strong difference emerges not only between genders but also within genders, whereby women require more attention from policy interventions to mitigate discrepancies in the financial system.
This study examines how public debt conditions inflation pass-through to observed interest-rate conditions in the European Union. Using EU country-year data for 1999–2024 and dynamic estimations for 2000–2024, we estimate reduced-form panel models in which inflation pass-through varies smoothly with lagged public debt through natural cubic splines. In the main short-rate specifications, pass-through is strongest at very low debt levels and weaker across the central and upper parts of the debt distribution, without a uniformly monotonic decline. The pattern is concentrated at impact and short annual horizons and remains visible in clean short-rate and non-euro samples. Euro-area sovereign-spread specifications do not reproduce the same baseline attenuation profile. By showing that fiscal conditions shape the strength and timing of inflation pass-through across monetary regimes, the study advances understanding of heterogeneous interest-rate adjustment in a fiscally fragmented European Union.
Existing research on Czech interest rate pass-through predominantly relies on static approaches that mask temporal dynamics and lacks systematic quantification of credit risk premiums. Using rolling 8-year windows and ARDL models over 2004–2025, we analyze time-varying transmission from the 5-year interest rate swap to housing loan rates and from 3-month PRIBOR to corporate lending rates. For housing loans, long-run pass-through ranges from 0.5 to 1.0, reaching near-completeness in the 8-year windows ending in 2015–2017 and after 2022. A one percentage point unemployment increase raises housing loan rates by approximately 0.2
Our paper assesses income convergence of 46 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE-10) countries with the USA. We apply multidimensional approaches comprising beta, sigma and convergence clubs. The beta convergence approach examines both absolute and conditional convergence, combining regression models with system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models while we employ log t regression tests for the identification of convergence clubs. The results indicate absolute beta and sigma convergence between the CEE-10 countries and the USA, whereas no such convergence is found for SSA countries. Additionally, the findings reveal conditional convergence with the USA, occurring at annual speeds of 7
