1,720,962 research outputs found
The Impact of the Social Mood on the Italian Sovereign Debt Market: A Twitter Perspective
No full textBy analysing the relationship between a new experimental daily index based on Twitter data (the Istat’s Social Mood on Economy Index—SMoEI) and the structure of Italian (and Spanish) sovereign interest rates, our work sheds new light on the great significance of the interconnections between economic sentiment and the Italian sovereign bond market. A placebo test performed on Spain introduces a possible extension of this linkage to the European market, highlighting the deep integration of financial markets within the European Monetary Union. Within a VAR and VECM framework with daily frequency data (2016–2022), we show that public shaping mechanisms play a role in the cost of debt financing. Our analysis emphasises the importance of economic sentiment when it comes to financial markets, putting the role of macroeconomic fundamentals in a different light. This result should be interpreted with caution, as updates to fundamentals can be affected by a time lag. In any case, recognising the importance of this index has at least two implications: on the one side, the SMoEI could represent a more responsive indicator for predicting investor sentiment; on the other side, media channels—as well as the European and national institutions—should gain relevance for their potential impact on collective sentiment, encouraging the importance of economic education and non-alarmist communication
Ex-post and real-time estimations of the output gap: A new assessment of fiscal procyclicality in the eurozone
No full textThe asymmetric impact of the pandemic crisis on interest rates on public debt in the Eurozone
No full textThe outbreak of Covid-19 has played the role of a ‘game changer’ in the way countries of the Eurozone have faced the economic consequences of the pandemic crisis. This paper investigates what has happened to the interest rates of the sovereign bond in selected countries of the Eurozone during 2020. While the pandemic crisis can be interpreted as a symmetric shock, we found some important asymmetric consequences both in the sovereign bond market and the credit default swap market. Even though the European Central Bank (ECB) has played a fundamental role in easening tensions, especially with the announce of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP), countries with a higher pre-Covid level of the debt-to-GDP ratio have been found to undergo a significant jump in interest rates and a greater perceived risks of default. Important policies implications emerge in relation to the future role of the ECB
Crude oil, international trade and political stability: Do network relations matter?
No full textThe aim of this work is to investigate the different implications in terms of political stability that a high oil dependency has in both oil-exporting and oil-importing countries. We employ network analysis to understand which countries are most connected in the global crude oil trade, and central in the intermediation of the flows. Then, we use this information to estimate the effects of oil dependency on political stability on a panel of 155 countries over the period 1995-2019, by means of a simultaneous-quantile regression model. Our findings corroborate the resource curse hypothesis in relation to oil-exporting countries, especially linking this outcome to the emergence of rent-seeking behaviours. Interestingly, we find that a different type of resource curse hy-pothesis - related to the indirect endowment of oil resources - also affects intermediary countries. As for oil importers, we find that countries that are heavily dependent on oil as the main energy source are largely exposed to geopolitical turmoil and risk to import political instability together with oil
Income-related unmet needs in the European countries
No full textThis paper proposes an assessment of the association between income and unmet health needs in 29 European countries included in the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) in 2015. Income-related inequalities for four categories of unmet needs are estimated by the Erreygers Index (EI). Unmet needs are organised into two categories: on the one side, unmet needs directly associated with households’ budget constraints; on the other side, unmet needs not directly associated with budget constraints, as waiting lists and transportation problems. Results show that all categories of unmet needs fall on lower-income people for most European systems. Furthermore, when analysing the determinants of unmet needs, those directly associated with budget constraints are led by the economic drivers, while income-related unmet needs due to long waiting lists and distance or transportation problems are more related to institutional factors such as the low quality of government
The Multi-dimensional Oil Dependency Index (MODI) for the European Union
No full textOil constitutes more than one third of total energy available in the European Union (EU), which continues to depend heavily on fossil fuels. Russian exports have known a remarkable growth in the last two decades, making this country crucial – as the war in Ukraine has recently shown – in deciding the energy future of the EU. In this regard, we provide a comprehensive and dynamic measure of oil dependency, constructing the Multi-dimensional Oil Dependency Index (MODI) for EU-28 countries (including the United Kingdom) during the period 1999–2019. This composite index considers four different key dimensions of oil dependency, i.e. energetic, economic, international and geopolitical dependencies, exploiting the multivariate technique of the Principal Component Analysis. The subsequent determination of rankings and their variation over time can be useful for policymakers to identify key areas where to intervene and reduce dependency, as well as to set benchmarks for policy actions. Our analysis reveals some interesting findings: first, the EU has still much to do to decouple oil consumption from GDP growth and achieve the environmental targets set by the European Green Deal; second, EU countries present very different degrees of oil dependency and, in several aspects, trends are not aligned; third, international and geopolitical dependency on oil constitute a worrisome problem for EU's energy security
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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