Rising debt levels have caused a revival of financial repression in the euro area and the USA. The Federal Reserve directly represses US bond yields and assists in financing the state budget, resulting in an overall liquidation effect from falling bond yields of about three per cent of total...

As austerity policies are unpopular with voters and high debt levels are a drag on growth, several economists, most famously Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, have suggested that governments might have to consider an extra dose of financial repression as a way out of the low growth-high debt...

Diverging fiscal policy paths, housing booms and diverging unit labour costs were driving forces of rising intra-European current account imbalances, which were underpinned by low interest rates. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the adjustment of intra-EMU current account imbalances has been...

Japan's industrial and trade policies are often seen as the reason for high Japanese balance of trade surpluses. Does this theory stand up to a close examination of the relationships between balance of trade, trade policy and structural change?

This paper contributes to the discussion on the European current account imbalances by analysing the intra-European trends since 1990 based on the theory of optimum currency areas. The authors show that German unification was the origin of not only the 1992-93 EMS crisis but also rising...

The coronavirus crisis has caused new distress in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), as the southern part of the EMU has been hit stronger than the northern part. The common currency prevents nominal exchange rate adjustment in response to the asymmetric shock. Policymakers have...