During the Great Crisis, most governments in industrial countries supported their domestic financial sector under stress and responded to strong declines in output growth with fiscal stimulus packages. Starting in 2010, attention focused on the sustainability of the resulting debt burdens. We...

This paper investigates the interaction of market views on the sustainability of sovereign debt and the perceived credit risk of banks. This interaction came into spotlight during the recent financial crisis, as government interventions in support of the financial sector were associated with...

This paper employs a time-varying parameter state space model to explore the impact of the crisis on bank retail rates in the euro area. We show that σ-convergence in interest rates has been adversely affected by the crisis and quantify the role of sovereign and credit risk as two alternative...

Using loan-level data, we find that syndicated lending by European banks with sizeable balance sheet exposures to impaired sovereign debt was negatively affected after the start of the euro area sovereign debt crisis. We also observe a reallocation away from foreign (especially US) markets. The...

This paper re-assesses findings of the literature that the systematic debt stabilising response in fiscal policy has been sufficiently strong for keeping debt ratios on a sustainable path in Euro area countries. In doing so, it adjusts the standard approach to the specific context of Economic...

This paper investigates the role that Eurobonds could play in making EMU stable in the long run. We establish that EMU's budgetary problems are not only caused by lack of budgetary discipline, but also by the large and sudden fiscal deterioration during the financial crisis. This type of shock...

Employer matching of employee 401(k) contributions can provide a powerful incentive to save for retirement and is a key component in pension-plan design in the United States. Using detailed administrative contribution, earnings, and pension-plan data from the Health and Retirement Study, this...

We analyze the effect of the business cycle on price dispersion in Europe . Five decades of price level dispersion data for Europe enable us to distinguish short-term influences from long-term influences like market integration. We find that at the business cycle frequency, price dispersion...

We provide new insights on the formation of inflation expectations - in particular at a time of great financial and economic turmoil - by evaluating results from a survey conducted from July 2009 through July 2010. Participants in this survey answered a weekly questionnaire about their short-,...

We empirically investigate how well different learning rules manage to explain the formation of household inflation expectations in six key member countries of the euro area. Our findings reveal a pronounced heterogeneity in the learning rules employed on the country level. While the expectation...