What policy objective should a common central bank in a heterogeneous monetary union pursue? Should it base its decisions on the EU-wide average of inflation and growth or should it instead focus on (appropriately weighted) national rates of inflation and growth? We find that a central bank that...

This paper reviews the factors that will determine the shape of financial markets under EMU. It argues that financial markets will not be unified by the introduction of the euro. National central banks have a vested interest in preserving local idiosyncracies (e.g. the Wechsels in Germany) and...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis trust, in the European Central Bank (ECB) has reached an historical low. Taking panel data and using a fixed effects DFGLS estimation for a 12–country sample over the time period 1999 to 2011 with a total of 312 observations, this paper detects a...

The asset purchase program of the Euro area, active between 2015 and 2018, constitutes an interesting special case of Quantitative Easing (QE) because the ECB's (Public Sector Purchase Program) PSPP program involved the purchase of the bonds of peripheral Euro area governments, which were...

The asset purchase programme of the euro area, active between 2015 and 2018, constitutes an interesting special case of Quantitative Easing (QE) because the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) involved the purchase of peripheral euro area government bonds, which were clearly not...

We analyze the benefits and costs of a non-euro country opting-in to the banking union. The decision to opt-in depends on the comparison between the assessment of the banking union attractiveness and the robustness of a national safety net. The benefits of opting-in are still only potential and...