A sustainable long-run pattern in the relative competitiveness of euro area countries is a key factor for the survivorship of the monetary union. We analyze the issue focussing on unit labor cost dynamics using cointegration analysis for the whole economy and for the manufacturing sector...

Ziel des Europäischen Verfahrens zur Vermeidung und Korrektur makroökonomischer Ungleichgewichte ist es, gesamtwirtschaftliche Fehlentwicklungen in der EU und im Euroraum frühzeitig zu erkennen und zu korrigieren. Wie sind die bisherigen Erfahrungen mit diesem Prozess und wie kann er noch...

Griechenlands Zahlungsprobleme gefährden offensichtlich nicht die Stabilität der Eurozone, obwohl seine Schuldentragfähigkeit langfristig nicht gewährleistet ist. Dennoch wurde Griechenland eine Programmverlängerung um vier Monate zugestanden und auch über ein drittes Hilfsprogramm wird...

Two of the four macroeconomic adjustment programmes, Portugal and Ireland’s, can be considered a success in the sense that the initial expectations in terms of adjustment, both fiscal and external, were broadly fulfilled. A rebound based on exports has taken hold in these two countries, but a...

The current instruments in the EU to deal with debt and liquidity crises include among others the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Both are temporary in nature (3 years). In terms of an efficient future crisis management...

The recent extensive package introduced by the Commission is the most comprehensive reinforcement of economic governance in the EU and the euro area since the launch of the Economic and Monetary Union. Broader and enhanced surveillance of fiscal policies, but also macroeconomic policies and...

We assess the time varying features of fiscal sustainability in the euro area via revisiting the empirical relationship between the primary budget surplus and the debt-to-GDP ratio. Focusing on a sample of 11 Euro-area countries between 1999Q1 and 2013Q4 and by means of time series analyses, we...

We study the effects of the euro area monetary policy on the institutional sectors in Portugal during the period 2000:4 2015:4. Our results show that the single monetary policy affected some variables that are proxies for the funding of each institutional sector of the economy: general...

This paper provides new insights about the existence of expansionary fiscal consolidations in the Economic and Monetary Union, using annual panel data for 14 European Union countries over the period 1970-2012. Different measures for assessing fiscal consolidations based on the changes in the...

We analyze fiscal rules within a Monetary Union in the presence of (i) asymmetric information about member states' potential output and, therefore, output gap and (ii) bail-out among member states. In our framework, bail-out lowers the scope for signalling (discrimination) by member states...