The euro zone crisis is commonly regarded as a sovereign debt crisis. This definition certainly applies to Greece, but the Irish case represents an almost pure specimen of a banking crisis voluntarily transformed into a sovereign crisis. A debt crisis in two small, peripheral economies could...

The introduction of the euro in 1999 is without any doubt one of the great achievements in the European integration process. In one bold stroke, national monetary sovereignty was abolished and transferred to a new European institution, the European Central Bank, that from then on became the...