We study the effect of credit information sharing on the likelihood of banking crises using a comprehensive cross-country dataset for the period from 1975 to 2006. The empirical analysis shows that credit information sharing reduces the likelihood of banking crises and it does more so in low...

This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to study whether public debt has a causal effect on economic growth in a sample of OECD countries. The results are consistent with the existing literature that has found a negative correlation between debt and growth. However, the link between...

The nature of fiscal policies was changed dramatically by the creation of the Eurozone. While prior to the start of the Eurozone, national governments were sovereign in that they could back up the issue of debt by the issue of money, they lost this sovereignty in the Eurozone. This had dramatic...

There are some striking similarities between the pre 1914 gold standard and EMU today. Both arrangements are based on fixed exchange rates, monetary and fiscal orthodoxy. Each regime gave easy access by financially underdeveloped peripheral countries to capital from the core countries. But the...

We examine whether the introduction of the euro had a significant impact on the synchronization of business cycles among members of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Empirical evidence on this relationship is rare so far and suffers from methodical weaknesses, such as the absence of time...

This paper aims at explaining why the CFA countries have successfully maintained a currency union for several decades, despite failing to meet many of optimum currency area criteria. We suggest that the CFA zone, while not optimal, has been at least sustainable. We test this sustainability...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue “The Crisis in the Euro Area”. We take stock of what the euro area crisis has taught us about monetary integration. At the inception of the euro area in 1999, the main parameters of the theory of monetary integration seemed to have...

This paper is interested in the nexus between external debt and export competiveness. Specifically, while we find that once external debt exceeds a certain threshold it is negatively associated with export growth, we are interested in determining whether the tipping points vary based on country...

This paper examines how financial openness and institutional quality affect international capital inflows, using data of 112 countries from 1985 to 2009. Our main findings are twofold. First, while financial openness and institutional quality do not individually have a significant impact on...

The earlier 2007/2008 financial crisis generated the main lessons for monetary policy, notably that price stability does not necessarily guarantee financial stability. Nevertheless, the on-going Eurozone crisis has pointed to further lessons, notably that a single currency covering diverse...