[Einleitung] Motivation für den vorliegenden Beitrag ist die aktuelle Diskussion um einen möglichen Austritt Deutschlands aus dem Euroraum mit Wiedereinführung der D-Mark. Dazu ist kürzlich eine Prognos-Studie publiziert worden, welche die Vorteile des Verbleibs im Euroraum zu berechnen...

It is argued that the stronger member states of the European Monetary Union should find their way out of the Euro in order to avoid being dragged into a disastrous course of inflation and over-indebtedness by the weaker members. A sudden exit would presumably cause financial turmoil as well as...

The reasons for the current financial crisis are analysed and a proposal for financing a bad bank is made. In particular, it is proposed to give the banks in trouble government zero bonds rather than cash in exchange for their toxic assets. The term of the zero bonds is determined individually...

100 years after Böhm-Bawerks death and nearly 70 years after Keynes has died there is still fundamental controversy about the factors which determine the interest rate in the long run. While Economists in the Austrian tradition see it as solely driven by real phenomena, Keynesian authors mainly...

Walter Eucken was the head of the Freiburg school of economics, a circle of German ordoliberal scholars of the interwar period, whose thoughts were highly influential in the immediate post war period. Being disillusioned by what he called the “age of experiments”- the failure of both...

This paper discusses the instrument of equalisation claims, which has successfully been used in two previous German debt crises as a method for stabilizing the balance sheets of financial institutions. A modern version of this method would swap temporarily illiquid assets for government bonds...

This paper critically discusses three proposals to overcome the zero interest bound, which have recently been proposed by prominent economists. We trace back the historical origins of these proposals, reaching back to the late 19th century, and comment on their theoretical and practical...