A perceived need to increase nominal wage flexibility as a substitute for domestic monetary policy and a tendency to less wage moderation are likely to promote bargaining co-ordination and social pacts in the EMU. But such co-ordination is not likely to be sustainable in the long run, as it...

The Single Supervisory Mechanism was introduced to eliminate the common-pool problem and limit uncontrolled lending by national central banks (NCBs). We analyze its effectiveness. Second, we model how, by forbearing and providing refinancing credit, NCBs avoid domestic resolution costs and,...

We examine the fiscal footprint of macroprudential policy in euro area countries arising through the bond market channel (Reis, 2021). Using local projections, we estimate impulse responses of the fiscal balance to an unexpected tightening in macroprudential capital regulation. Our findings...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

Using an extended data set of EU countries ranging from 1971-2006 and relevant econometric methods, we investigate the economic, political, and institutional determinants of government deficits in the EU. The results show a strong opportunistic behaviour of policymakers which leads to political...

This paper formulates a dynamic Random Coefficient Model (RCM) to consider a set of popular determinants of public deficits in the EU-15 over the period 1971-2006, both at a country-specific level and from a population-wide perspective. Although the extent of government deficits and debt has...

This paper investigates the sources and size of trade barriers at the industry level. We derive a micro-founded measure of industry-specific bilateral trade integration that has an in-built control for time-varying multilateral resistance. This trade integration measure is consistent with a...

Low international competitiveness of a set of euro area countries, which have become evident by large current account deficits and rising risk premiums on government bonds, is one of the most challenging economic policy issues for Europe. We analyse the role of private restructuring and public...

The ECB has been arguing in the past that since there is no trade-off between price stability and financial stability, the pursuit of price stability is the best a central bank can do to also maintain financial stability. We argue that there is a potential trade-off between price stability and...