This volume contains a collection of papers, commentaries and speeches concerning the first decade of the euro and the recent global financial crisis.

A striking and unexpected feature of the financial crisis has been the sharpappreciation of the US dollar against virtually all currencies globally. The paper findsthat negative US-specific macroeconomic shocks during the crisis have triggered asignificant strengthening of the US dollar, rather...

This volume contains a collection of papers, commentaries and speeches that review the strategic and operational decisions taken by the central banks to combat the crisis and that reflect on the lessons for the future. The contributions are grouped around five broad topics: monetary policy...

This volume contains a collection of papers, commentaries and speeches that review the strategic and operational decisions taken by the central banks to combat the crisis and that reflect on the lessons for the future. The contributions are grouped around five broad topics: monetary policy...

This paper analyses the role of asset prices in comparison to other factors, in particular exchange rates, as a driver of the US trade balance. It employs a Bayesian structural VAR model that requires imposing only a minimum of economically meaningful sign restrictions. We find that equity...

This paper assesses whether the international monetary system is already tripolar and centred around the US dollar, the euro and the Chinese renminbi (RMB). It focuses on what we call China’s “dominance hypothesis”, i.e. whether the renminbi is already the dominant currency in Asia,...

The impact of currency collapses (i.e. large nominal depreciations or devaluations) on real output remains unsettled in the empirical macroeconomic literature. This paper provides new empirical evidence on this relationship using a dataset for 108 emerging and developing economies for the period...

In this paper we examine linkages across non-energy commodity price developments by means of a factor-augmented VAR model (FAVAR). From a set of non-energy commodity price series, we extract two factors, which we identify as common trends in metals and a food prices. These factors are included...

A striking and unexpected feature of the financial crisis has been the sharp appreciation of the US dollar against virtually all currencies globally. The paper finds that negative US-specific macroeconomic shocks during the crisis have triggered a significant strengthening of the US dollar,...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutions are fundamental for a country’s prosperity. The paper focuses on olitical events in Italy over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 has helped insulate Italy’s financial...