This paper treats the question to what extent globalization trends restrict a countryspecific regulation policy in industrial countries. The empirical analysis makes use of recently collected regulation indicators for four policy fields: financial market, product markets, labour markets and...

In this analysis, the informational content of central bank rhetoric is assessed based on the experience with the ECB since 1999. Among the ECB’s communication channels we focus on the monthly press conferences. Based on a counting of certain signal words we construct a wording indicator...

Since the start of EMU national fiscal policy in the Eurozone can be conducted almost without paying any attention to consequences for the exchange rate. This might lower fiscal discipline. In order to shed light on the empirical relevance of this consideration, the impact of the exchange rate...

Capital mobility is helpful to cope with the loss of adjustment instruments in EMU. High capital mobility in the sense of Feldstein and Horioka (FH) can limit the negative consequences of shocks affecting the saving capacity of an economy in the Eurozone. It is the aim of this paper to assess...

With the introduction of the Euro, a single European money market has emerged. Further wholesale financial markets are considered to be highly integrated within the European Union. However, integration in retail financial markets is less advanced. For measuring financial market integration this...

The official view on ECB monetary policy claims that monetary decisions are based solely on average data for the euro zone and that diverging regional developments are disregarded. However, experience from other two tier central banks and theoretical considerations suggest that this official...