This paper argues that the loose monetary policy of two of the world’s most important financial institutions-the US Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank-were ultimately responsible for the outburst of global financial crisis of 2008 - 09. Unusually low interest rates in 2001 -...

The last review of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy in 2003 followed a period of predominantly upside risks to price stability. Experience following the 2008 financial crisis has focused renewed attention on the question of how monetary and fiscal policy should best interact, in particular...

We evaluate the effects of permanently reducing labour tax rates in the euro area (EA) by simulating a large-scale open economy dynamic general equilibrium model. The model features the EA as a monetary union, split in two regions (Home and the rest of the EA - REA), the US, and the rest of the...

The core objective of this paper is to determine the main political and economic conditions and challenges related to the possible evolution of the integration process in the euro area toward fiscal federalism and fiscal union as a way to increase the capacity of the area to cope with future...

This paper analyses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic shock on small open economies in a monetary union with an application to the euro area. Accounting for a high degree of openness and a strong dependence on intra and extra union trade, we focus on the size and the direction of...

The suspension of the fiscal rules in Europe and the enactment of NGEU provide an opportunity to rethink the inherited budget orthodoxy. The issue at stake is not only of political economy and institutional changes in the EU. It is also of economic analysis and theory. The coronavirus crisis...

The economic and monetary union was actually compulsory, despite that the Maastricht Treaty does not express as such. Moreover, specialists argue that the monetary union is equally required to be fiscal as well. And what is this? Of course, strenghtening central governance, once more against the...

When a monetary union member (a small open economy) borrows and lends with other union members and only has access to conventional debt instruments, its optimal fiscal police is time inconsistent because its governments are short of policy instruments to render optimal fiscal policy time...

Differential requirements for seigniorage provide a weak case for retaining monetary independence. As regards adjustment to asymmetric shocks, nominal exchange rate flexibility is at best a limited blessing and at worst a limited curse. Absence of significant fiscal redistribution mechanisms...