This paper examines the determinants of CDS spreads and potential spillover effects for Eurozone countries during the recent financial crisis in the EU. We employ a Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model which combines the advantages of traditional VAR modelling with those of a panel-data approach. In addition to variables that proxy for global and financial market spread determinants we also employ variables that proxy for behavioral determinants. We find that the determinants of CDS variance are neither uniform nor stable during different periods and different countries. For instance, as we move from 2008 to 2014 the impact of the slope of the term structure on CDS spread variance is increasing for peripheral countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and decreasing for core countries such as Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. Other findings indicate that investor sentiment was an important CDS spread determinant during the subprime crisis, along with other factors, while spillover effects run from larger peripheral economies such as Spain and Italy to core countries; spillover effects from Portugal, Greece, and Ireland are of minor importance.

This paper offers evidence on the effect of ECB's conventional and unconventional monetary policy on economic expectations in Euro-area countries during the US and EU crisis. We employ a range of research methodologies in a sample of nine Eurozone countries and combine expectations/sentiment indicators with a set of macroeconomic and financial variables. We find that ECB's conventional monetary policy (and Fed's monetary policy stance) has a positive and significant effect on economic expectations for Core Eurozone countries and a weak effect on Peripheral Eurozone countries. ECB's unconventional policy measures, however, have a negative short term effect on Core countries’ economic expectations. This result is robust to different methodologies (PVAR, QVAR, FAVAR) and different datasets. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of monetary policy in the determination of economic expectations.

Are low-income individuals trapped because they are unable to make good financial decisions? We use a randomized controlled survey experiment to examine how prompting individuals to think about their personal economic condition (priming) affects their scores on a financial literacy quiz. We find that the marginal effect of poverty on financial literacy scores is 3.7 times higher for primed (treated) respondents compared to nonprimed ones. Priming not only worsens the financial literacy scores of low-income individuals, but also improves the scores of high-income individuals. Anxiety and shame are key explanations for our baseline results. Our findings shed light on how economic condition affects financial cognition, especially with regard to cognitive impediments resulting from negative emotions.

Corporate taxation can have redistributive effects on income and wealth. We hypothesize and empirically establish such an effect working via bank credit. We use a unique sample of small majority-owned firms that apply for credit, where only some firms (treated) experience a corporate tax cut. We show that after the decrease in corporate tax rates, the treated poorer business owners get easier access to credit. However, this policy also considerably increases loan amounts and decreases loan spreads for the treated richer. Ultimately, reducing the corporate tax rate predominantly increases the future income and wealth of richer business owners.

Access to banking services for the poorest individuals is key to reducing their vulnerability, but are poor people likely to seek help from bank advisors? This study tests the hypothesis that poor peoples’ financial concerns affect their willingness to seek professional financial advice from banks. A survey experiment is run by performing “hard priming” (a €2000 car repair expense) on a treatment group and “soft priming” (a €200 expense) on a control group. Overall, hard priming triggers higher positive intention to consult a bank advisor. However, poverty sharply and negatively moderates this effect. For respondents below the poverty line, the priming effect is close to significantly negative and becomes such when restricting the sample to individuals who responded before their payday rather than after it. Hard priming also decreases poor people’s self-reported trust in banks, and this variable mediates the negative effect on intention to consult a bank advisor. There is no evidence that a lack of financial literacy or actual financial distress influence the priming effects.

This paper tests for herding towards the market consensus for US and UK leading stocks, and to the best of our knowledge addresses a gap in the literature regarding the importance of major fundamental macroeconomic announcements. The results indicate that US investors tend to herd during days when important macro data are released, and that there have been herding spill-over effects from the US to the UK during earlier financial crises. Further results reveal more differences in herding behavior between the two markets: in the US we find that investors herd due to both fundamentals and non-fundamentals during different crises, when in the UK there is herding only due to fundamentals and only during the Dotcom bubble burst. These results suggest that the drivers of herding behavior are period and country specific.