This paper investigates the impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on income inequality across a broad set of European countries from 1995 to 2022, with a particular focus on the core-periphery divide. Applying both time series and panel data methodologies-including Vector Autoregressions (VAR), panel VAR and local projections-we assess how economic uncertainty influences inequality dynamics. Our findings reveal three key insights. First, uncertainty shocks significantly affect income inequality in nearly all countries, and the effect is time-varying. Second, the effect is heterogeneous across countries but varies: uncertainty tends to reduce inequality in core European countries such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, while mainly increasing it in periphery and intermediate countries like France, Greece, Italy and Spain. Third, panel analysis confirms this asymmetry, showing more persistent and positive inequality effects in periphery countries. These results suggest that income inequality in Europe's periphery is more vulnerable to economic uncertainty, underscoring the importance of stable policy environments and targeted fiscal responses.

We examine the impact of economic upturns and downturns on subsequent economic performance in Europe over six plus centuries. Instead of utilizing the conventional post-World War II framework, we employ a comprehensive panel of GDP data for England, Holland and Italy spanning more than 600 years. We find consistent evidence in favor of asymmetry. Downturns are followed by statistically significant higher growth rates, while upturns are followed by mildly lower growth rates which are often not statistically significant. Our finding of asymmetry suggests that business cycle properties are consistent with mechanisms similar to Friedman’s plucking hypothesis.

PurposeWe investigate the presence of contagion between Bitcoin and four traditional assets (stocks, bonds, gold and the US dollar exchange rate) over the period 2015-2024.Design/methodology/approachWe implement a framework that combines the DCC-GARCH specification and a time-varying causal inference methodology.FindingsOur findings support that Bitcoin remains weakly connected to the global financial markets. Contagion is limited, appearing sporadically from S&P 500 to Bitcoin and from Bitcoin to the US dollar index. However, when we impose a stricter definition of extreme correlation or a multivariate VAR specification, the contagion results vanish, indicating no systematic contagion between Bitcoin and traditional assets.Practical implicationsOur evidence implies that Bitcoin may be used as a useful portfolio diversification instrument.Originality/valueWe deploy a recently developed novel methodology that combines the DCC-GARCH model and a recent time-varying Granger causality procedure to distinguish between extreme high correlation and contagion and find no evidence of systematic contagion effects of Bitcoin with conventional asset classes.

This paper focuses on financial asset return spillovers and economic policy uncertainty spillovers in three continents (Europe, America, and Asia) in the last few decades. We examine three financial asset markets (stock, bond, and foreign exchange). Spillovers are measured using the Diebold–Yilmaz spillover index. In the first part, we measure the size of spillovers and find a significant increase in spillovers during the global financial crisis, the European sovereign crisis, and the recent pandemic. In the second part, we test for the effect of uncertainty spillovers on financial asset return spillovers. Using rolling impulse response functions, we obtain the following results: First, the responses of financial markets spillovers to uncertainty spillovers are time-varying and are mostly positive. Second, the highest responses in financial market return spillovers to uncertainty spillovers occur in America and the smallest responses in financial market return spillovers occur in Europe. Third, among the three financial markets, the highest responses apply to the foreign exchange market. Finally, the largest responses during the pandemic apply in Europe.

This study investigates the long-run and short-run relationship between consumption, income, financial and housing wealth, and a long-term interest rate for the 50 US states. Using an updated set of quarterly data from 1975 to 2018, we perform panel cointegration analysis allowing for cross-sectional dependence. We obtain the following results. First, there is strong evidence for cointegration among consumption and its determinants. Second, estimates of the housing wealth and financial wealth elasticity of consumption range from 0.072 to 0.115 and 0.044 to 0.080, respectively. Finally, Granger causality tests show that there is a bidirectional short-term causality between per capita consumption, income, and financial wealth in the short run and between all the variables in the long run.

We introduce a new US uncertainty index which is more sensitive to consumer spending and therefore reflects households’ decisions. We find evidence that macroeconomic uncertainty shocks impose negative, statistically significant, and long-lasting effects on consumption, income and financial wealth held by households. In contrast, housing wealth is not affected by uncertainty. Evidence suggests significant variation in housing wealth response to a rise of uncertainty emphasizing the heterogeneity among states. Possibly housing wealth is a key identifier of household heterogeneity.

We examine the empirical relationship between output variability and output growth for Britain using data for eight centuries covering the 1270 to 2014 period. Drawing on the economic history literature, we split the full sample period in four subperiods and use GARCH models to measure output growth uncertainty and estimate its e ect on average growth. Within each sub-sample we allow output growth to depend on the state of the system, e.g. 2-regime switching model would switch between high-growth and low-growth regimes. We find that the e ect of uncertainty on growth di ers depending on the existing growth regime. Low-growth regimes are associated with a negative e ect of uncertainty on growth, and medium or high-growth regimes are associated with a positive e ect. These findings are consistent across the four states of economic development. Our results indicate why the empirical literature to date has found mixed results when examining the e ect of uncertainty on growth.

This paper focuses on economic policy uncertainty spillovers across Europe, before and after the outburst of the Eurozone crisis, using data for seven Eurozone countries for the period 2003–2019. At first, we analyze the spillovers of uncertainty in Europe via the estimation of the Diebold‐Yilmaz spillover index. The results indicate that uncertainty connectedness was 50.5% before the crisis, while it dropped to 30.6% afterwards indicating a sharp drop in uncertainty spillovers across the seven Eurozone countries. We also find that the importance of domestic causes in national uncertainty has increased during the crisis at the expense of imported factors. Dynamic net spillovers reveal that core Eurozone countries are uncertainty exporters before the crisis, while periphery countries transmit uncertainty to other countries during the crisis. An examination of the country which suffered the most during the crisis, using impulse response analysis, reveals that the Greek macroeconomic indicators (stock market, GDP, unemployment, and the Economic Sentiment Index) were affected more by domestic, rather than European uncertainty. The highest responses are indicated during the crisis. Overall, there is positive interdependence between Greek and European uncertainty, which diminishes during the crisis.

Using a balanced panel of 19 industrial economies and a long time series ranging from 1950 to 2013, we investigate the short-run and long-run relationship between health, proxied by life expectancy, and income using panel cointegrating analysis and panel Granger causality. We find that total life expectancy, male life expectancy, and female life expectancy have all a positive and statistically significant short-run and the long-run effect on both total and per capita income. As a consequence, we conclude that health should be considered an important ingredient of the economic performance of an economy. We examine the robustness of our results using data from Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian countries.

In Greece, there is a widespread belief among consumers that fuel prices in the domestic market respond faster to crude oil price increases than decreases and they attribute this pricing pattern to exploitation of market power on behalf of the companies. This article attempts to investigate the issue of asymmetries in a two-stage price-adjusting mechanism able to identify the source of price asymmetries, either in the refining or in the distribution stage. The sample consists of daily data covering the period of January 2012 to November 2018 and has been split into two subsamples due to a structural break in October 2014. Employing threshold and momentum models of cointegration at the two stages linking crude oil to retail prices, we find that transmission is mostly symmetric for unleaded95 gasoline between 2012 and 2014 and asymmetric in the stage of refining for diesel. Between 2014 and 2018 asymmetry exists for both types of fuel in the refining stage, while the retail market presents symmetric pricing.

We employ daily aggregate and sectoral S&P500 data to shed further light on the day-of-the-week anomaly using GARCH and EGARCH models. We obtain the following results: First, there is strong evidence for day-of-the-week effects in all sectors, implying that these effects are part of a wide phenomenon affecting the entire market structure. Second, using rolling-regressions, we find that significant seasonality represents a small proportion of the total sample. Third, using a logit setup, we examine the impact of four factors, namely recessions, uncertainty, trading volume and bearish sentiment on seasonality. We reveal that recessions and uncertainty have explanatory power for anomalies whereas trading volume does not.

We constructed the monthly Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index for Greece for the period 1998-2018 using the Baker et al. (2016) methodology. This index is of critical importance for macroeconomic research given the presumed heightened levels of uncertainty in the Greek economy in the context of recent economic and political events. The newly-constructed time series of the uncertainty index is discussed and related to the recent economic and financial crisis in Greece and the Eurozone. Simple statistical analysis highlights the high levels of correlation in economic policy uncertainty between Greece, European countries and the USA. It is also shown that the uncertainty correlation between Greece and Europe is time varying and has become much lower since the onset of the Greek crisis.

The aim of this paper is to look at ways in which the contribution of in­ vestment in technology to consumer welfare might be measured. One useful approach to this question is demonstrated by means of a simple spatial model of trade and transportation. The model is used to elaborate on a dis­ cussion found in Melvin (1990). The empirical part of the paper deals with the banking sector. A key function of the banking system is to facilitate intermediation between borrowers and lenders. Taking this, perhaps, some­ what restricted view of banks, the measure demonstrated with the spatial model is applied within the framework of a complete banking model to see, specifically, if intermediation costs have been reduced by technology. Using data for the commercial banking sector in Ireland over the period January 1986 to August 1996, we find that the gains from technology in the provi­ sion of banking services, provided they exist, have not been passed on to the bank customers in the form of a lower bank interest rate spread.

This paper attempts to test for inflation convergence in a sample of 24 European Union countries. To tackle this issue, first- and second-generation panel unit root and stationarity tests are employed so as to provide evidence of inflation convergence before and after the launch of the single currency, the euro. We also test for and then allow for cross-sectional dependence. In general, the findings reveal that conditional inflation convergence exists for all panels under study. The estimation of half lives shows that the evidence for faster speed of convergence applies for the new member states followed by the core countries and the old member states. JEL classifications: C33, E3, F33 Keywords: Inflation Convergence, EU, Maastricht Criteria, Panel data

This article uses historical US inflation data covering over two centuries to examine the impact of the establishment of the US Federal Reserve on average US inflation and inflation uncertainty. We find that the founding of the Fed is associated with higher average US inflation and lower inflation uncertainty. Critically, these results are not driven by the post-1980 period, where the Fed policy is characterised by the dual mandate. Other important results are that the gold standard period is associated with both lower inflation and inflation uncertainty, and that banking and stock market crises are a positive determinant of inflation uncertainty and perhaps inflation. World Wars I and II and the US Civil War are associated with both higher inflation and higher inflation uncertainty. In addition, we find that the central bank has responded to increasing inflation uncertainty in a stabilising manner in support of the Holland hypothesis.

One potential real effect of infl ation is its infl uence on the dispersion of relative prices in the economy which affects economic efficiency and aggregate output. Using a novel data set for the US and UK and a VARMA asymmetric bivariate GARCH-M model of in flation and relative price dispersion, we test for the effects of infl ation and infl ation uncertainty on relative price dispersion. We obtain two main results: First, infl ation affects relative price dispersion positively in the US supporting the menu costs model and negatively in the UK supporting the monetary search model. Second, there is no evidence for the role of infl ation uncertainty in explaining relative price dispersion, either for the US or the UK.

Housing is distinct from other financial assets, since it is a durable consumer good for households. Due to the irreversible nature of housing investment, uncertainty should be an important determinant of housing investment. From a theoretical point of view, though, this impact is ambiguous. This paper extends previous empirical work by employing the techniques of bivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models in a group of forty-eight US states. In particular, we use data on housing permits as a proxy for housing investment and the house price index for the forty-eight contiguous US states and estimate bivariate GARCH models (BEKK) for each state, in order to obtain proxies of housing investment and house price uncertainty. Moreover, we use the Economic Policy Uncertainty index as an alternative measure of uncertainty. This setup allows us to test for the impact of uncertainty on housing investment growth and house price inflation and examine whether the effects differ across the different states. In general, we find that in most states uncertainty tends to increase housing investment growth and to decrease house price inflation. The cross-state differences in results may be due to variation in the degree of speculation in housing markets.

The day-of-the-week effect for the securitized real estate indices is investigated by employing daily data at the global, European and country level for the period 1990 to 2010. We test for daily seasonality in 12 countries using both full sample and rolling-regression techniques. While the evidence for the former is in line with the literature, the results for the latter cast severe doubts concerning the existence of any persistent day-of-the-week effects. Once we allow our sample to vary over time, the average proportion of significant coefficients per day ranges between 15 % and 24 %. We show that higher average Friday returns evident in previous literature, remain significant in 21 % of the rolling samples. We conclude that daily seasonality in the European Real Estate sector is subject to the data mining and sample selection bias criticism.