Global financial integration has been associated with divergent patterns of real convergence and the current account in emerging markets. While countries in emerging Asia have been running sizeable current account surpluses, countries in emerging Europe have been facing large current account...

Commodity prices play an important role in economic developments in most of the 24 Western and Central African (WCA) countries covered in this paper. It is confirmed that in the light of rising commodity prices between 1999 and 2005, net oil exporters recorded strong growth rates while net...

Large gaps have opened up between the transition countries in terms of the real income rises the have achieved since 1989. Since phases of hyperinflation are a thing of the past in nearly all of the reforming countries, and the private sector has established itself as the largest contributor to...

The Federal German Constitutional Court has made it clear that it considers the OMT program to be in violation of the ECB’s mandate. This paper argues that the Court’s decision reflects an endorsement of the efficient-market hypothesis. If financial markets are efficient, interference of any...

With the OMT program the ECB has de facto taken over the role as a lender of last resort (LoLR) for euro area governments. While this has been welcomed by some, many policymakers and economists, in particular in Germany, have strongly criticized the ECB for taking this step, even though it has...

Seit mehr als einem Jahr ist der Preisanstieg im Euroraum im Trend rückläufig. Angesichts der geringen Inflationsrate wird über ein mögliches Abrutschen in eine Deflation diskutiert. Wie groß ist diese Gefahr und wie sollte die EZB reagieren? Das wahrscheinlichere Szenario der nächsten...

This paper argues that Europe is unable to get the euro crisis under control because it has chosen a crisis management strategy that is diametrically opposed to the one applied in the global financial crisis. In 2008, crisis management focused on measures that instilled confidence, while...

The ECB’s decision in favour of additional unconventional monetary policy measures has been severely criticised by German economists, experts and the media. This is consistent with the relentless criticism that the ECB has been subject to over recent years, even though the facts clearly show...

The long-held truism that finance is always good for growth has been called into question by the global financial crisis. This article examines new evidence on the finance-growth nexus from a European perspective. More specifically, it compares the approach of many CESEE countries — i.e....