The turmoil affecting southern euro area countries (notably Greece) has ushered in the second phase of the financial crisis: that of sovereign default. It is now time to look for a new framework that allows the Union to deal with the failure of one of its members. In this new CEPS Policy Brief,...

The recent financial crisis was caused by a combination of asset price bubbles, mainly in the real estate sector, and a credit bubble that led to excessive leverage. A recurrent theme of this paper is that an appropriate assessment of the crisis should be made in light of the bubble that...

The ECB has been arguing in the past that since there is no trade-off between price stability and financial stability, the pursuit of price stability is the best a central bank can do to also maintain financial stability. We argue that there is a potential trade-off between price stability and...