We investigate the effect of fiscal institutions such as the strength of the finance minister in the budget process and deficits on interest spreads contained in bond yields of the countries now belonging to the Eurozone. Deficits significantly increase risk premia measured by relative swap...

This study analyses the time-varying determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads between Q1/1999 and Q1/2010. Before the financial crisis, which started end of 2007, financial markets seemed to have had limited assessment of credit risks in sovereign bond markets and risk aversion did not play...

Macroeconomic Policies of the Economic and Monetary Union: Theoretical Underpinnings and Challenges Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer, The Levy Economics Institute and Leeds University Abstract This paper presents two issues: first, an effort to decipher the type of economic analysis and...

This paper describes the Federal Reserve's analytical framework under Volcker and Greenspan, as it was constructed in the early 1980s, during a period of high inflation. It traces the modeling and policy implications of this framework. It discusses the Fed's actual track record and the state of...

A sequence of crises and emergency interest rate cuts has moved global interest rates towards zero and government debt to historical records. We discuss the available options to exit from unconventional monetary policies and unsustainable government debt. First, we shed light on the probability...

This paper presents empirical arguments that the debt crisis of the European Monetary Union is not primarily a sovereign debt crisis but a foreign debt crisis of entire countries. The empirical evidence suggests furthermore that the strong increase in the net international debt position of...