The response in 2008-09 to the global financial crisis was in many ways a high water mark for transatlantic policy coordination. The major economies of the EU and the US rapidly agreed on a series of measures to limit the crisis. However, the common approach has since unraveled. This paper...

The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) and the proposed prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances regulation (EIP) are designed to avoid imbalances. However, these instruments overlap, and need clarification. Both the ESRB and the Commission, which is given certain powers by the...

Europe has responded to the crisis with strengthened budgetary and macroeconomic surveillance, the creation of the European Stability Mechanism, liquidity provisioning by resilient economies and the European Central Bank and a process towards a banking union. However, a monetary union requires...

In a monetary union, national fiscal deficits are of limited help to counteract deep recessions; union-wide support is needed. A common euro-area budget (1) should provide a temporary but significant transfer of resources in case of large regional shocks, (2) would be an instrument to counteract...

Fiscal rules, such as the Excessive Deficit Procedure and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this depends on the...

The construction of the euro area left aside the question of a fiscal union, but the crisis re-opened the debate. Of the three classical functions of fiscal policy – provision of public goods, redistribution and stabilisation – only the last provides a clear justification for fiscal policy...

Fiscal rules, such as the excessive deficit procedure and the stability and growth pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this creative accounting...