This paper considers the determinants of the macroeconomic costs of joining EMU for the new EU Member Sates, and compares them with those of the EMU members. Specifically, we investigate the business cycle correlation between the candidate's economy and that of the euro area as a whole, and the...

The aim of this paper is to assess the short and medium-term impact of debt crises on GDP. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1970 to 2008, the paper shows that debt crises produce significant and long-lasting output losses, reducing output by about 10 percent after 8 years. The...

We use a new approach to assess long-term fiscal developments. By analyzing the time-varying behaviour of the two components of government spending and revenue - responsiveness and persistence -, a feature not captured by automatic stabilisers, we are able to infer about the sources of fiscal...

We use EU sovereign bond yield and CDS spreads daily data to carry out an event study analysis on the reaction of government yield spreads before and after announcements from rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, Fitch). Our results show significant responses of government bond yield...