The Greek crisis in 2010 was a ‘tragedy waiting to happen.' However, and contrary to the impression created by the stabilization program's immediate focus on restoring fiscal balance, its roots lie in the eroding over the past three decades international competitiveness and the attendant...

We use insights from the literature on currency crises to offer an analytical treatment of the crisis in the market for Greek government bonds. We argue that the crisis itself and its escalating nature are very likely to be the result of: (a) steady deterioration of Greek macroeconomic...

The enormity and pervasiveness of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 makes it relevant to analyze the circumstances that can explain this catastrophe. This will also provide clues to the appropriate remedial measures needed to prevent future occurrences of similar developments.The...

This paper explores primarily the level of international competitiveness of Greece and the degree of fit between the conditions prescribed by the optimal currency areas (OCA) theory with the actual situation in Greece. Given that Greece now shares the same currency with Germany, the de facto...

The inventory/cost ratio is a measure of the time to produce and distribute goods ("time to produce") and, therefore, an important determinant of working capital demand. In the aftermath of emerging market crises, manufacturing industries with higher inventory/cost ratios experienced a larger...

A Real Business Cycle model of the UK is developed to account for the behaviour of UK nonstationary macro data. The model, when tested by the method of indirect inference, can explain the behaviour of main variables (GDP, real exchange rate, real interest rate). We use it to explain how 'crisis'...

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...

The global economic and financial crisis has sparked an unprecedentedly large, generalized fiscal policy response in practically all major industrial and emerging economies, which will change the fiscal and macroeconomic landscapes for some time to come. This paper offers an overview of the new...

This paper reconsiders the role of monetary policy in Sweden's strong recovery from the Great Depression. The Riksbank in the 1930s is sometimes seen as an example of a central bank that was relatively innovative in terms of the conduct of monetary policy. To consider this analytically, we...