The possibility that the euro area might break up was being raised even before the single currency existed. These scenarios were then lent new life five or six years on, when appreciation of the euro and problems of slow growth in various member states led politicians to blame the European...

We ask whether Poland is at risk of the boom-bust problem that has afflicted economies around the time of euro adoption. Our answer, inevitably, is mixed. On the one hand the fact that Poland is an outlier, credit-growth wise, accentuates the danger of a boom if one believes in mean reversion....

This paper assesses the East Asian Economies' openness to cross-border capital flows and exchange rate arrangements in the past decades, with the main focus on emerging market economies. Using Mundell's trilemma indexes, we note that the convergence of the three policy goals in East Asia toward...

We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing anti-system parties in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy. What mattered...

Using newly assembled data on foreign exchange market intervention, we construct a daily index of exchange market pressure during the 1992-3 crisis in the European Monetary System, allowing us to pinpoint when and where the crisis was most severe. Our analysis focuses on a neglected factor in...

In the UK's 2016 referendum on EU membership, young voters were more likely than their elders to vote Remain. Applying new methods to a half century of data, we show that this pattern reflects both ageing and cohort effects. Although voters become more Eurosceptical as they age, recent cohorts...

This paper reconsiders the 1992-3 crisis in the European Monetary System in light of its emerging market successors. That episode was a predecessor of the Mexican and Asian crises in the sense that both capital movements and domestic financial fragility placed important roles. The output effects...

The Maastricht Treaty on Europe Union features an Excessive Deficit Procedure limiting the freedom to borrow of governments participating in the European monetary union. One justification is to prevent states from over- borrowing and demanding a bailout which could divert the European Central...

This paper considers the impact on trade of preferential arrangements in Europe since the 1950s. Using a first difference version of the gravity model, we find that the EC and EFTA altered the pattern of international trade. We also find evidence of trade diversion in several cases, notably that...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of speculative attacks on pegged exchange rates in 22 countries between 1967 and 1992. We define speculative attacks or crises as large movements in exchange rates, interest rates, and international reserves. We develop stylized facts concerning the...