Recent literature on the European debt crisis emphasizes that rising external trade and lending imbalances between the European Monetary Union's (EMU) Northern and Southern member states served as a crucial determinant behind speculative divergence between these two regions. However, these...

Regional disparities within the European Union have always been perceived as an impediment to monetary integration. This is why discussions on a joint currency, from their very beginning, were linked to compensatory payments in the form of regional policy payments. Structural assistance to poor...

Im Kontext der Eurokrise wird mitunter der Übergang in ein diskretionäres Wechselkursregime diskutiert, das seinen Teilnehmern politisch verhandelte Auf- und Abwertungen ermöglichen würde. Über die Wünschbarkeit und die Wirkungsweisen solcher Auf- und Abwertungen finden sich in der Debatte...

Synchronization of national price inflation is the crucial precondition for a well-functioning fixed exchange rate regime. Given the close relationship between wage inflation and price inflation, convergence of price inflation requires the synchronization of wage inflation. Why did the...

The performance of EMU member economies is shaped by different and structurally entrenched "growth models" whose success depends on specific macro-regimes – restrictive for export-led growth, accommodating for demand-led growth. These two types of models cannot be equally viable under a...