This paper examines return and volatility spillovers between the Turkish stock market with international stock, exchange rate and commodity markets. Our aim is not only to examine spillover behaviour with a large emerging market but also to examine crossasset spillovers and how they vary across two periods of financial market crisis; the dotcom crash and the liquidity-induced financial crisis. This is to be compared with existing work that typically focuses on industrialised countries or single asset markets only. Using the spillover index methodology we uncover an interesting distinction between these two periods of markets stress. Over the dotcom period spillovers are largely between the same asset class, notably two exchange rate series and two international stock markets series. However, in the period including the financial crisis, spillovers both increase and cross asset types and suggest a much greater degree of market interdependence. Understanding this changing nature in spillovers is key for investors, regulators and academics involved in theoretical model development.

According to conventional wisdom, "peripheral" Southern European members of the euro area (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) suffer from a problem of competitiveness. Since their membership of the euro area renders devaluation impossible, adjustment should come through decreasing wages and prices in these countries, which, by improving the trade balance, should lead to a recovery of previous levels of employment and growth. In this paper, the authors estimate trade balance equations for the Southern European countries, both for total trade and for the trade performed with the European Union, taking three alternative measures of the real exchange rate, based on consumption price indices, export prices and unit labour costs, respectively. Their main conclusion is that demand seems to be more relevant than relative prices when explaining the evolution of the trade balance.

In the literature, the effectiveness of the foreign exchange market is an important concept for traders and policy makers, if price reflects all information in the market, this market is said to be efficient. In other words, Fama et al. (1969) term of the efficient market were defined as a market which " adapt quickly to new information". At the weak form efficiency, in the market, all prices, past prices or returns can be reflected in all the information, on the other hand, at the semi-strong form efficiency, the exchange rates are not only reflect past information concerning exchange rates, but also they are reflect other currency exchange rates and information concerning macroeconomic variables. The main purpose of this study is whether TL / $ and TL / Euro exchange rate markets are efficient at the weak and semi-strong form or not is to analyze by using unit root and cointegration methods with structural breaks during the period 2006:04-2013:12 in Turkey. Analysis results show that the Turkish foreign exchange market is efficient at the weak form and not efficient at the semi-strong form and forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis is not valid for Turkey.

The factors influencing the real exchange rate are an important issue for a country's price competitiveness, which is especially relevant to those countries belonging to a monetary union. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between fiscal policy and the real exchange rate for the case of Spain. In particular, we explore how changes in government spending, differentiating between consumption and investment, can affect the long-run evolution of the real exchange rate vis-à-vis the euro area. The distinction between two alternative definitions of the real exchange rate, based on consumption price indices and export prices, respectively, will also prove to be crucial for the results.

This paper examines return and volatility spillovers between the Turkish stock market with international stock, exchange rate and commodity markets. Our aim is not only to examine spillover behaviour with a large emerging market but also to examine crossasset spillovers and how they vary across two periods of financial market crisis; the dotcom crash and the liquidity-induced financial crisis. This is to be compared with existing work that typically focuses on industrialised countries or single asset markets only. Using the spillover index methodology we uncover an interesting distinction between these two periods of markets stress. Over the dotcom period spillovers are largely between the same asset class, notably two exchange rate series and two international stock markets series. However, in the period including the financial crisis, spillovers both increase and cross asset types and suggest a much greater degree of market interdependence. Understanding this changing nature in spillovers is key for investors, regulators and academics involved in theoretical model development.