Earlier work on U.S. import demand suggest that structural change may have occurred sometime in the mid-1960s. Since this evidence was based upon a somewhat arbitrary splitting of the sample period, the dating of change is uncertain. In this paper we investigate the question of structural change for both U.S. imports and exports, using a procedure that lets the data determine if and when structural change may have occurred. We find weak evidence of structural change for imports in the mid- to late 1960s and much stronger evidence in 1972:1 and thereafter. There is no evidence of structural change for exports.

This paper studies the reaction of the Euro's value against major currencies to sovereign rating announcements from Moody's, S&P and Fitch CRAs during the Eurozone debt crisis in 2010–2012 based on event study methodology combined with GARCH models. We also analyze how the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish government long-term bonds were affected by CRA announcements. Our results reveal that CRA downgrades, watchlist and outlook announcements had no impact on the value of the Euro currency but increased exchange rate volatility. At the same time, downgrades as well as negative outlook announcements increased the yields of French, Italian, and Spanish bonds and even affected the German bond's yields. This shows that the monetary union has led to a breakdown of the consequences of the rating shocks between currency value and sovereign bond yields. The reason is that part of the rating shock is absorbed by an internal repricing of sovereign bonds.

This paper analyzes the effects of parliamentary election cycles on the Turkish banking system. Using annual bank-level data representing all banks in Turkey during 1963–2007, we present evidence of meaningful differences in the structure of bank assets, liabilities and financial performance across different stages of the parliamentary election cycle. However, we find that government-owned banks’ behavior does not meaningfully differ from that of either domestic and foreign-owned private-sector banks before, during or after elections. Our estimates also show that government-owned banks underperform both domestic and foreign-owned private-sector counterparts.

Earlier work on U.S. import demand suggest that structural change may have occurred sometime in the mid-1960s. Since this evidence was based upon a somewhat arbitrary splitting of the sample period, the dating of change is uncertain. In this paper we investigate the question of structural change for both U.S. imports and exports, using a procedure that lets the data determine if and when structural change may have occurred. We find weak evidence of structural change for imports in the mid- to late 1960s and much stronger evidence in 1972:1 and thereafter. There is no evidence of structural change for exports.