This paper documents and analyzes crisis-related changes in government debt issuance practices in the 16 euro zone countries and Denmark. Using a newly constructed database on primary market debt issuance during 2007-09, we find evidence of a shift away from pre-crisis standards of best funding...

Negative policy interest rates have prevailed for some years in Denmark and are a more recent development in Sweden. Among other potential side effects, negative rates could weaken banks' profitability by reducing net interest income, their main source of earnings. However, an analysis of...

Total investment in Denmark has experienced a sharp slowdown following the global financial crisis. This slowdown has coincided with a decline in labor productivity and expansion of the current account surplus. This paper presents stylized facts summarizing the investment slowdown followed by an...

The Danish flexicurity model has attracted attention among policymakers in Europe, because it suggests that a flexible labor market can coexist with a generous welfare system to achieve low unemployment. Using a panel of 19 countries over 1960-2002, the paper identifies the elements of the...

This paper proposes a signaling model that offers a new perspective on why governments deviate from optimal tax smoothing and delay debt stabilization. In our model, dependable—but not fully credible—governments have an incentive to tighten the fiscal regime when the signaling effect on...

This paper analyzes the transmission of shocks and policies among and across the Nordic economies and the rest of the world. This spillover analysis is based on a pair of estimated structural macroeconometric models of the world economy, disaggregated into thirty five national economies. We find...

This paper studies how the composition of fiscal adjustments influences their likelihood of “success”, defined as a long lasting deficit reduction, and their macroeconomic consequences. We find that fiscal adjustments which rely primarily on spending cuts on transfers and the government wage...