The origins of the reference values for budget deficits and public debt (3 and 60 per cent of GDP) in the euro area are explored. Both numbers came into the Maastricht Treaty by coincidence. Later attempts to legitimise them are traced and found unconvincing. In particular the debt cap is...

The euro is irreversible but it needs reform to address well-known design deficiencies and also new challenges. Although progress has been made, further steps are needed, the most important of which are: revision of the fiscal rules, establishing a central stabilisation capacity, and completing...

While the European Union (EU) fiscal rules are suspended in the years 2020–2022, new rules are in the making and might be activated in 2023. If the old rules were used again, massive austerity would be required in the face of the strongly elevated level of public debt and the gap to the 60 per...

The financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath offer an opportunity to institute significant reform in economics teaching, starting at the introductory level. Mainstream macroeconomics texts still rely heavily on a classical assumption of a long-run full employment equilibrium, which underrates...

The paper analyses some well-known explanations of the eurozone crisis and seeks to provide an answer to the question of whether expansionary fiscal policy is feasible within the restrictive confines of the existing structure of the eurozone. The paper addresses this question by focusing on a...

Inflation targeting, primary surpluses and a floating exchange rate under supply and exchange-rate shocks can combine to create deleterious effects on the economic dynamic. This paper reports on computer simulation experiments using a dynamic and stochastic model that can incorporate different...

This article distinguishes between credit easing policies and quantitative easing (QE) policies. The authors argue that there are two broad transmission mechanisms associated with quantitative easing: the Friedmanian mechanism, which is based on the theory of the money multiplier and the...

Much of the criticism directed at austerity programs implemented after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, more forcefully in the eurozone, have relied on the same arguments Keynes and others raised against the (British) Treasury View developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Austerity, however, has been...

The article provides a critical assessment of how the Economic and Monetary Union was designed, implemented and reformed in the European Union and discusses the risks of a slow-motion reform process. It is argued that the fact that the euro area economy has recovered in the last few years has...