This article narrates Ireland’s recent odyssey from the pride and envy of Europe to kneeling supplicant through the eyes of an econometric model of the government bond market. The exercise suggests that, in essence, two developments triggered and propelled Ireland’s drift towards sovereign...

The debt crisis of the eurozone revealed a structural problem of the single market rooted in the external imbalance problem of indebted member states. The assumption of this paper is that the current account imbalances within the eurozone are based on an intra-eurozone competitiveness disparity...

This paper presents three simple policies for overcoming the crisis that can be implemented immediately and require none of the moves such as national guarantees or fiscal transfers to which many Europeans are opposed, nor moves towards federation that entail Treaty changes, which electorates...

This paper investigates whether the recent EU governance reform is a step in the right direction and discusses its ability to restore European financial stability. The authors argue that the reform appears incapable of dealing with the factors responsible for the sovereign debt crisis, and they...

The establishment of a European Monetary Fund (EMF) enjoys increasing academic and political support, though its advocates do not necessarily agree on the purpose and functions of such an institution. This paper aims to examine the features of the EMF that are relevant to sovereign debt...

There is thus a fundamental credibility issue about the willingness of the ECB to be a lender of last resort in the government bond markets. This will continue to make the eurozone a fragile construction. As a result, the possibility of a future euro crisis cannot be excluded.