In this article we inquire into the root causes of the present financial crisis by drawing on a Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson trade model. At the origin of the current crisis are global imbalances originating from distortions in relative prices. Due to impasses in international production, financial...

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...

The paper scrutinizes the spillover effects of expansionary monetary policies of a center economy to the macroeconomic policies of periphery countries, dependent on the exchange rate regime. In particular the impact of the US quantitative easing on the Chinese economy is analysed. The results...

This paper studies the impact of political events that systematically undermined the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) on the euro's foreign exchange expectation bias for the period 2001 to 2005. Our findings suggest that euro foreign exchange markets were attentive to the political dispute over...

Some developing countries borrow abroad and experience good growth (above 2 %), which we call good growth, while others borrow and have poor growth (below 1 %), which we label as bad growth. The data comprise all 443 available observations of borrowing for one 5-year period and average growth...

This article deals with the macro-economics of the Trans-European Automated Re- al-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System (TARGET2). Originally, the TARGET2 was in-tended to solely function as a monetary arrangement for liquidity issues. It is shown that the TARGET2 contributes to a...