We assess public finances solvency for Euro Area countries using quarterly data between 1999Q1 and 2020Q4. Through a country-by-country analysis, the answer to the title question is true. For most countries, (i) the primary budget balance reacts positively to the lagged public debt ratio and...

We explore the reaction of the euro area periphery sovereigns' fiscal positions to an unconventional monetary policy shock. We estimate panel vector autoregressive (VAR) models over the period 2010-2018, and identify the shock by imposing sign restrictions. Our results suggest that the...

The paper analyses the role of fiscal and monetary policy for the development of the current account imbalances in the euro area, including the most recent developments during the coronavirus crisis. Several financial transmission channels such as international bank lending, changes in TARGET2...

Using two measures of the fiscal position, the cyclically adjusted primary budget balance (CAPB) and the total budget balance, we assess the Twin Deficit Hypothesis for the Euro Area in the period 1995-2020. Furthermore, we estimate time-varying coefficients of the current account balance...

Rather than stabilising aggregate demand, discretionary fiscal policy tends to amplify cyclical fluctuations of output. The commonly accepted reasons are political economy and uncertainty. In the EU, the pro-cyclical nature of discretionary fiscal policy has also been associated with the...

This paper develops a decomposition framework to study the importance of different stabilization channels of an unemployment re-insurance scheme for the euro area. Running counterfactual simulations based on household micro data for the period 2000–16, the paper finds that the re-insurance...

We explore the effects of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy on the banks' sovereign debt portfolios. In particular, using panel vector autoregressive (VAR) models we analyze whether banks increased their domestic government bond holdings in response to non-standard monetary policy shocks,...

We estimate a three-region (DE-REA-RoW) structural macroeconomic model, and we provide a counterfactual on how nominal exchange rate flexibility would have affected the German trade balance (TB) by simulating the shocks of the estimated model under a counterfactual flexible exchange rate regime....

We examine the relationship between private bank deposits and macro/fiscal risk in the euro area. We test three hypotheses: First, private bank deposits relative to Germany are determined by macro/fiscal risk factors. Second, this relationship is time-varying. Third, time-variation is driven by...