The present crisis has revealed that, as expected, much of the safety net for handling failures in the banking system is deficient, particularly for cross-border banks, and the present problems had to be handled by a range of ad hoc measures. The principal new measure that needs to be undertaken...

Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) provides a more efficient mechanism for dealing with problem banks operating in more than one European country. In a PCA framework, a bank's losses are likely to be substantially reduced. This reduction in the losses to deposit insurance and governments will...

We study lessons from the experience of Finland in meeting the challenges of joining the euro area at its outset and its subsequent economic success. Traditional optimum currency area theory is too limited a framework for judging the experience in qualifying and membership.Five main factors have...

Using recent advances in time-varying spectral methods, this research analyses the growth cycles of the core of the euro area in terms of frequency content and phasing of cycles. The methodology uses the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and also Hilbert wavelet pairs in the setting of a...