We show that Eurozone bank risks during 2007-2012 can be understood as a "carry trade" behavior. Bank equity returns load positively on peripheral (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy, or GIPSI) bond returns and negatively on German government bond returns, a position that generated...

Macroprudential stress tests have been employed by regulators in the United States and Europe to assess and address the solvency condition of financial firms in adverse macroeconomic scenarios. We provide a test of these stress tests by comparing their risk assessments and outcomes to those from...

We show that a fiscal expansion by the core economies of the euro area would have a large and positive impact on periphery GDP assuming that policy rates remain low for a prolonged period. Under our preferred model specification, an expansion of core government spending equal to one percent of...

European unemployment is widely regarded as a problem of excessive real wages. This view as it is usually expressed carries the disturbing implication that there is a sharp conflict between the interests of those currently employed and the unemployed because it suggests that increases in...

In countries where wages are primarily set by collective bargaining, the effects on unemployment of changes in the economic environment depend crucially on the speed of learning of unions. This speed of learning is likely to depend in turn on the quality of the dialogue that unions have with...

U.S. macroeconomic evidence shows a negative relation between the rate of change of wages and unemployment. In contrast, most theories of wage determination imply a negative relation between the level of wages and unemployment. In this paper, we ask whether one can reconcile the empirical...

In the 1970s, European unemployment started increasing. It increased further in the 1980s, to reach a plateau in the 1990s. It is still high today, although the average unemployment rate hides a high degree of heterogeneity across countries. The focus of researchers and policy makers was...

After three years of near stagnation, the mood in Europe is definitely gloomy. Many doubt that the European model has a future. In this paper, I argue that things are not so bad, and there is room for optimism. Over the last thirty years, productivity growth has been much higher in Europe than...

This paper starts from two sets of facts about Continental Europe.The first is the steady increase in unemployment since the early 1970s. The second is the evolution of the capital share, an initial decline in the 1970s, followed by a much larger increase since the mid-1980s. The paper then...

We analyze the determinants and the long-run consequences of government interventions in the eurozone banking sector during the 2008/09 financial crisis. Using a novel and comprehensive dataset, we document that fiscally constrained governments “kicked the can down the road” by providing...