Much of the discussion about how to impose more convergence among member states of the eurozone has focused on what national governments should do to avoid divergent developments in a number of macroeconomic variables, e.g. competitiveness or current account imbalances. Without denying that...

The analysis in this Commentary provides strong evidence showing that the burden of the adjustments to the imbalances in the eurozone between the surplus and the deficit countries is borne almost exclusively by the deficit countries in the periphery. And although the European Commission has now...

Europe's policy-makers are engaged in protracted discussion on whether and how to increase the size of the euro rescue funds (the EFSF and the ESM). In this Policy Brief, Daniel Gros and Thomas Mayer argue that this attention on the headline size of the EMS and EFSF is misplaced. They propose...

We test the hypothesis that the government bond markets in the Eurozone are more fragile and more susceptible to self-fulfilling liquidity crises than in stand-alone countries. We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the PIGS countries in the Eurozone during...

The sovereign debt crisis has made it clear that central banking is more than keeping inflation low. Central banks are also responsible for financial stability. An essential tool in maintaining financial stability is provided by the capacity of the central bank to be the lender of last resort in...

We analyze the similarities and the differences in the fragility of the European Monetary system (EMS) and the Eurozone. We test the hypothesis that in the EMS the fragility arose from the absence of a credible lender of last resort in the foreign exchange markets while in the Eurozone it was...

Even though the financial crisis might have started in the US, CEPS Director Daniel Gros finds in a new CEPS Policy Brief that even more combustible material had accumulated in Europe, and that therefore that it likely that the cost will be higher here and the recovery slower than on the other...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis trust, in the European Central Bank (ECB) has reached an historical low. Taking panel data and using a fixed effects DFGLS estimation for a 12–country sample over the time period 1999 to 2011 with a total of 312 observations, this paper detects a...

In this paper we suggest that Eurozone countries face a policy trade-off among: 1) a common rule imposing co-movements in fiscal policy; 2) financial stability; and 3) financial integration. We provide empirical evidence documenting the existence of such a trade-off in the period characterized...

In this paper we provide empirical evidence documenting the nature of the Eurozone's fragility. We find that during periods of turmoil, financial markets have tended to impose strong programs of austerity on member countries of the Eurozone. This confirms the evidence we found in a previous...