Given the shortcomings of the current responses to the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, the author proposes utilising national gold reserves as collateral for government debt. Gold backing would be quite attractive to bond investors and would significantly ease the burden of high sovereign...

Low international competitiveness of a set of euro area countries, which have become evident by large current account deficits and rising risk premiums on government bonds, is one of the most challenging economic policy issues for Europe. We analyse the role of private restructuring and public...

Im November 2007 hat Prof. Dr. Wim Kösters sein 65. Lebensjahr vollendet. Dieses Ereignis ist Anlass, ihm die vorliegende Festschrift zu widmen. Wim Kösters wurde am 26. November 1942 in Greven / Kreis Steinfurt geboren. Er studierte von 1963 bis 1968 Volkswirtschaftslehre an der...

Die Euro-Finanzminister sind angesichts der geplanten Ausgabenerhöhung des hoch verschuldeten Italiens in Besorgnis. Die EU-Kommission verzichtete vorerst auf ein Defizitverfahren, obwohl die italienische Regierung die EU-Haushaltsvorschriften noch immer nicht erfüllt. Stürzt Italien Europa...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the implications of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) accession of eight Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) on their share in EMU-12 imports. Overcoming biases related to endogeneity, omitted variables and sample selection, our results...

Policymakers in the EU member states are currently shaping rescue packages to prevent the financial crisis hitting their economies with unmitigated force. Each government is responding to the emerging problems with a country-specific set of measures. Given the global nature of the crisis, would...

We analyze the importance of global shocks for the global economy and national policy makers. More specifically, we investigate whether monetary policy has become less effective in the wake of financial globalization. We also examine whether there is increasing uncertainty for central banks due...

We assess the differences that emerge in Taylor rule estimations for the ECB when using ex-post data instead of real time forecasts and vice versa.We argue that previous comparative studies in this field mixed up two separate effects. First, the differences resulting from the use of ex-post and...