We analyze the worst currency carry loss episodes in recent decades, including causes, attribution by currency, timing, and the duration of carry drawdowns. To explore the determinants of the length of carry losses, a model of carry drawdown duration is estimated. We find evidence that drawdown...

This paper employs a stylized New Keynesian DSGE model for a monetary union to analyze whether cyclical inflation differentials can be explained by cross-country differences concerning the characteristics of financial markets. Our results suggest that empirically plausible degrees of...

In this paper we suggest that Eurozone countries face a policy trade-off among: 1) a common rule imposing co-movements in fiscal policy; 2) financial stability; and 3) financial integration. We provide empirical evidence documenting the existence of such a trade-off in the period characterized...

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property affect the outcome of fiscal policies? In our model, we show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from...

In the wake of the euro area crisis, the debate on instruments to deepen economic integration among its members has intensified, among others putting forward a fiscal stabilization capacity for EMU members. Contributions made so far to further this idea have mostly concentrated on the...

Against the backdrop of the Greek three-act tragedy, we present a theoretical framework for studying Greece's recent debt and currency crisis. The model is built on two essential blocks: first, erratic macroeconomic policymaking in Greece is described using a stochastic regime-switching model;...

In this paper we propose an alternative explanation for the nature, sources and consequences of inflation rate differentials in a monetary union, such as EMU. To achieve this, we build on the new neoclassical synthesis (NNS) framework, recently advanced by Goodfriend (2002) and Goodfriend and...

Fiscal federalism may not be a panacea in a monetary union if it does not address the non-cooperative behaviour between fiscal policymakers. To prove this, we assess the relative merits of a fiscal federalism scheme in a monetary union and intergovernmental fiscal cooperation without such a...

We assess the role of national fiscal policies, as automatic stabilizers, within a monetary union. We use a two-country New Keynesian DGE model which incorporates non-Ricardian consumers (as in Gali et al. 2004) and a home bias in the composition of national consumption bundles. We find that...