This report considers four short-term, alternative scenarios for the eurozone and analyses their possible implications for global economic trends and the gold market. Overall, the main findings suggest that in the near future, motives other than inflation hedging will be the main drivers of gold...

Trust in the European Central Bank, as measured by the standard Eurobarometer (and other) surveys has fallen to an unprecedented low – especially in the larger euro area countries. The authors find that up to the start of the financial crisis in 2008, trust in the ECB was little affected by...

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...

Different economic and financial structures require different crisis responses. Different crises also require different tools and resources. The first ‘stage' of the financial crisis (2007-09) was similar on both sides of the Atlantic, and the response was also quite similar. The second stage...

Lax financial conditions can foster credit booms. The global credit boom of the last decade led to large capital flows across the world, including large movements of resources from the Northern countries of the euro area towards the Southern part. Since the start of the crisis and more markedly...

The statutes of the European Central Bank (ECB) stipulate that it should have recourse to national central banks (NCBs) to carry out monetary policy operations. Such a structure would not be a problem if these operations were all identical across member states and if the resulting profits and...