This paper, after reviewing briefly the early steps of European monetary integration and key elements of the EMU project as reflected in the Treaty of Maastricht, analyses the monetary integration strategy and convergence experience of member states, in particular that of Greece, in the 1990s...

The origins of the Greek-sovereign debt crisis were the country’s large fiscal and external imbalances. The key factor that abetted those imbalances was the absence of a short-to-medium term adjustment mechanism -- due to perceptions of sovereign bailouts -- in the euro-area that would have...

This paper examines questions related to possible capital account liberalisation in the Mediterranean countries. First, we provide an overview of the extent to which these countries have capital controls along with their exchange rate regimes and some basic macroeconomic aggregates. Second, we...

The influx of shipping receipts from the world's leading fleet has been critical for the development of the modern Greek economy. Following the fateful September of 2008, the range and speed of the shift in direction of the freight rates, combined with the general economic and credit climate,...

The large Greek current account deficit figures reported during the past few years have become the source of increasing concern regarding its sustainability. Bearing in mind the variety of techniques employed and the views expressed as regards the analysis and the assessment of the size of the...

This paper examines the capital flow experience of transition economies who are also prospective EU members with a view to shedding light on the likely problems they might encounter with exchange rate policy in the run up to euro area membership. We show that they have been experiencing fairly...

The aim of this paper is to study the main macroeconomic, financial and structural characteristics that affected current account developments in Greece over the period 1960-2007 and link these to the issue of external sustainability. Concerns over Greece’s external sustainability have emerged...

A lot of attention has been directed towards recent financial crises around the world. Empirical studies have found that short-term flows increase financial fragility and increase also the probability of financial crises. This study takes a macro-oriented approach and shows that while large and...

This article investigates by means of an augmented gravity model, the impact of EMU on financial market integration across time by assessing its effect on capital (equities and bonds) holdings. We contribute to the respective literature by investigating this effect from a global perspective and...

In this paper we suggest a VAR specification that proves to be successful in resolving the price puzzle featuring in VARs used for monetary policy analysis. We show that augmenting a standard VAR with a small number of variables that have forward-looking informational content is capable of...