The national debt stock of the UK is rising sharply as a result of the economic crisis, and equilibrium output is falling, with the capital stock contracting. Both problems could be alleviated by the rapid introduction (but slow implementation) of a policy to extend working lives. The paper...

The paper discusses the possibility of a systemic banking crisis as a result of debt defaults, putting this risk and its impact on the economy into recent historical context. It looks at the vulnerability of the personal and business sectors to increases in borrowing rates, and at the evidence...

Given the increase in world economic integration we wish to examine whether there is a case for coordinating monetary policy across some of the major economies. In late 1998 and early 1999, US monetary policy responded to global economic conditions and interest rates were cut in response to the...

The US current account deficit is in excess of 6 per cent of GDP, and is leading to an accumulation of debts. We use NiGEM to evaluate the causes of the decline, and suggest that domestic absorption in the US has increased markedly. Nominal realignments and monetary expansions elsewhere are...

This paper explores the impact of openness, as measured by import penetration, on the size and duration of fiscal multipliers and spillovers across European Union members. The analysis is embedded in a macroeconomic model, NiGEM, to capture structural differences across countries, time and...

Given the magnitude of “global imbalances” in the run-up to the subprime crisis, we test for an impact of the current account balance on the probability of banking crises in OECD countries since 1980. This variable has been neglected in most early warning models to date, despite its...