Since the financial crisis in 2008-09, concern over the sustainability of some EU countries’ sovereign debt has continued to mount higher and higher. This paper explores the ways in which the financial crisis caused the deterioration of European debt-to-GDP ratios, examines which countries are...

This article provides an overview of the impact of public sector pay and employment cutbacks in EU countries and discusses their justifi cation as part of austerity packages. It begins with the outcomes in the countries first hit by the economic crisis before discussing the impact of the crisis...

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...

Since the summer of 1982 the banking community has been faced with an international debt crisis of unprecedented dimensions. The debt rescheduling agreements that have been negotiated since then involve sums totalling no less than $ 100 billion. However, they give the international financial...

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...