The prospective normalisation of monetary policies in the main OECD areas will be challenging given that current policy rates are likely to be significantly below neutral levels and that central bank balance sheets will be above the pre-crisis levels by a wide margin. Monetary policy...

In the wake of the Great Recession, a massive monetary policy stimulus was provided in the main OECD economies. It helped to stabilise financial markets and avoid deflation. Nonetheless, GDP growth has been sluggish and in some countries lower than expected given the measures taken, and...

Economic policies in several major countries have shifted from fiscal stimulus to austerity in the last few years. They seek to reduce fiscal deficits and reverse the increasing trend of public debt mainly through immediate spending cuts. The fact that fiscal austerity is applied simultaneously...

This paper argues that the U.S. financial crisis is a new type of crisis: a "financial black hole." Financial black holes are characterized by the breaking-up of credit market discipline and the large-scale financing of negative NPV projects. In a theoretical model, we explain how the...

We study how the macroeconomic dynamics following credit cycles vary with business bankruptcy institutions. Using data on bankruptcy efficiency and business credit around the world, we document that business credit booms are followed by severe declines in output, investment, and consumption in...

A salient trend in crisis intervention has emerged in recent decades: Government and central banks offered funding directly to nonfinancial firms, bypassing banks and other credit intermediaries. We analyze the long-term consequences of such policies by focusing on firm quality dynamics. In a...

Eine ethisch sensibilisierte Sichtweise auf die Finanzmaerkte und den von dort ausgehenden externen Effekten gibt Anlass zur tiefgruendigen Hinterfragung finanzwirtschaftlicher Wert- und Normengefuege. Die kritische Finanzethik praesentiert sich als Unterstuetzerin in diesem Prozess, indem sie...

We examine the pricing of financial crash insurance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis in U.S. option markets. A large amount of aggregate tail risk is missing from the price of financial sector crash insurance during the financial crisis. The difference in costs of out-of-the-money put...

This paper compares the depth of the recent crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the recent crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

The report analyses recent economic developments and short- and medium-term prospects of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe including Turkey, as well as Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and China. Separate chapters present an overview of developments in the European Union's...