This paper analyses the incidence and severity of sudden stops in euro area countries before and after the introduction of the ECB's asset purchase programmes. We define sudden stops as abrupt declines in private net financial inflows, i.e. total flows adjusted for EU and IMF loans and changes...

We investigate the interactions across current account misalignments, Real Effective Exchange Rate misalignments and financial (or output) gaps within EU countries. We apply panel techniques, including a Bayesian panel VAR, to 27 EU members over the period 1994-2012. We find that, for the euro...

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

We model a reinsurance mechanism for the national unemployment insurance programs of euro area member states. The risk-sharing scheme we analyze is designed to smooth country-level unemployment risk and expenditures around each country's median level, so that participation and contributions...