This paper asks whether rating agencies played a passive role or were an active driving force during Europe's sovereign debt crisis. We address this by estimating relationships between sovereign debt ratings and macroeconomic and structural variables. We then use these equ-ations to decompose...

This note demonstrates that when developing countries remove barriers to migration and integrate their labour markets, children may be driven out of schools and into informal or paid employment in the comparatively rich countries. In industrialized countries, the same mechanism might force...

An online survey among undergraduate macroeconomics instructors reveals that roughly half of them were scared when the crisis erupted and remain wary that more may be in the offing. As regards teaching, courses feature much the same lineups of models as they did before the crisis. A striking...

The global financial crisis triggered different policy responses in Europe and the United States. Interestingly, survey results suggest that there is also a significant difference in how undergraduate macroeconomics instructors responded to the crisis, with U.S. instructors placing significantly...

We narrate Ireland’s recent odyssey from the pride and envy of Europe to kneeling supplicant through the eyes of an econometric model of the government bond market. The exercise suggests that, in essence, two developments triggered and propelled Ireland’s drift towards sovereign default:...

We explore whether experiences during Europe's sovereign debt crisis support the notion that governments faced scenarios of self-fulfilling prophecy and multiple equilibria. To this end, we provide estimates of the effect of interest rates and other macroeconomic variables on sovereign debt...

Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht der Versuch, anhand von einfachen Rechenbeispielen Transparenz in die Frage der steuerlichen Auswirkungen des Bankgeheimnisses auf die internationale Staatengemeinschaft zu bringen. Diese stilisierten Beispiele können leicht verfeinert werden, um die Kalküle von...

The paper shows that structural models of the IS-LM and Mundell-Fleming variety have a lot to tell about the macroeconomics of the current global crisis. In addition to demonstrating how the emergence of risk premiums in money and capital markets may drive economies into recessions, it shows the...

The current crisis is not only one of financial markets, but also of macroeconomics. Leading scholars call for a paradigm shift away from dynamic general equilibrium models, though some argue that the profession's arsenal already contains the tools and historical lessons needed to deal with such...

We analyze a multi-country model in which a small group of countries adopts banking secrecy (BS) laws and a withholding tax. The other group doesn't. BS countries benefit in all relevant macroeconomic variables, including taxes and the provision of public goods. In non- BS countries most of the...