Over the past decades, the internal market for banking services has flourished. The financial crisis and contagion from banks to sovereigns and across borders has underlined the need to match the size and level of cross-border activities of banks with the integration of banking supervision. To...

In March 2013 around 130 participants from academia, banking and finance, governments and central banking gathered at the premises of the OeNB in Vienna for a conference jointly organized by the European Money and Finance Forum SUERF, the OeNB and the Austrian Society for Bank Research to...

The current financial, economic and fiscal crisis is among other things characterised by complex interrelations between financial, fiscal, macroeconomic and political instability. One instability breeds another, with feedback loops generating self-reinforcing adverse cycles: The financial crisis...

We examine whether the introduction of the euro had a significantly positive impact on the synchronization of business cycles among members of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which might arise due to the lack of country-specific monetary policy shocks in the euro area. Empirical evidence on...

In this paper selective issues of long-run sustainability of monetary unions are analyzed. Using theoretical insights and the experience of EMU up to now we argue that empirical evidence on OCA criteria for EMU suggests that benefits for the countries participating in EMU outweigh costs by a...

Evaluating the costs and benefits of exchange rate stability requires a somewhat different approach for Mercosur than for the EU. EU member countries are highly integrated in terms of trade in goods and services. By contrast, trade integration within Mercosur is much more limited, intra-area...

In this paper, we show how a simple model with sign restrictions can be used to identify symmetric and asymmetric supply, demand and monetary policy shocks in a two-country structural VAR. The results can be used to deal with several issues that are important in the OCA-literature. Whilst the...

In this paper we review the developments of prices in the Central and Eastern European EU accession countries between 1990 and 2001. The paper starts with an analysis of the short-term and long-term (dis)inflation dynamics. This is complemented by an appraisal of price level convergence. The...