Italien leidet politisch und ökonomisch unter der Finanzkrise in der Europäischen Union. Das Wachstum ist negativ und die Arbeitslosigkeit steigt. Obwohl die Neuverschuldung verringert wurde und die Handelsbilanz Überschüsse aufweist, bleibt ein Zinsspread bestehen. Zudem ist zu befürchten,...

Im Zentrum der Europäischen Union stehen seit jeher Frankreich und Deutschland. Derzeit gehen von Frankreichs Präsidenten Macron Impulse für eine Erneuerung der EU und der Eurozone aus. Bisher war die Partnerschaft mit Frankreich durch häufig unterschiedliche Vorstellungen über...

The purpose of this paper is to convince the reader that the Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond and not a fiat currency--thereby overturning 230 years of scholarly interpretation; to show that the public and leading Americans knew and acted on this fact, and to illustrate the...

Allowing habits to be formed at the level of individual goods – deep habits - can radically alter the fiscal policy transmission mechanism as the counter-cyclicality of mark-ups this implies can result in government spending crowding-in rather than crowding-out private consumption in the short...

This paper studies debt fragility and the sharing of the resulting strategic uncertainty through ex post bailouts. Default arises in equilibrium because of both fundamental shocks and beliefs. The probability of default depends on borrowing rates and, in equilibrium, on the beliefs of lenders...

In 2001 the Hungarian economy departed from the path of balanced growth. During the past six years the state budget deficit has grown to an unsustainable level, and also the deficit in the current accounts has become too high. Real wages have increased considerably faster than labour...

This paper characterizes Ramsey-optimal monetary policy in a medium-scale macroeconomic model that has been estimated to fit well postwar U.S.\ business cycles. We find that mild deflation is Ramsey optimal in the long run. However, the optimal inflation rate appears to be highly sensitive to...

This paper studies the role of exit from a monetary union during a debt crisis. A monetary union, such as the European Monetary Union, needs to establish a procedure for exit as a tool to cope with debt default. The paper studies various forms of exit and argues that "Euroization" is both a...

This paper discusses the economic effects of EU enlargement for the group of Central and East European accession countries (ACs). It consists of three parts In Part A the financial aspects of accession to the EU are explained. It deals firstly with the outcome of the negotiations at the December...

In this paper we construct financial conditions indices (FCIs) for the euro area, for the period 2003 to 2011, using a wide range of prices, quantities, spreads and survey data, grounded in the theoretical literature. One FCI includes monetary policy variables, whilst two versions without...