Historical experience suggests that the distribution of monetary policy authority among the members of a monetary union is a key aspect of the design of a central bank constitution. We analyse alternative institutional solutions to that problem with different degrees of centralization of...

In East Germany, political considerations and ample funding precipitated a fast income convergence with the West in the early 1990s. However, the ensuing deterioration of competitiveness has led to a standstill in real convergence since the middle of the past decade. By contrast, Central Europe...

From 1995 to 2001 Russia witnessed an asset market boom, a deep financial crisis, and a surprisingly forceful recovery. An event study of this episode provides important insights for Emerging Market investment and Russia's medium-term prospects. The initial surge in bond and stock prices in...

JEL Classification: E32, E52, F31

Fiscal rules, such as the excessive deficit procedure and the stability and growth pact (SGP), aim at constraining government behavior. Milesi-Ferretti (2003) develops a model in which governments circumvent such rules by reverting to creative accounting. The amount of this creative accounting...

We study the channels of interstate risk sharing in Germany for the time period 1970 to 2006, estimating the degrees of smoothing of a shock to a state’s gross domestic product by factor markets, the government sector, and credit markets, respectively. Within the government sector, we pay...

This story describes the circumstances that led to all five of us starting as editors at the same time, the unexpected things we have found, the unanticipated reactions we have encountered, how we worked as an editorial team, the central role of the editorial office manager, how we managed to...

Ende November 2003 ist das Defizitverfahren nach Art. 104 EG Vertrag gegen Deutschland und Frankreich ausgesetzt worden. Ist damit der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt gescheitert? Muß er reformiert werden? Welche Reformoptionen gibt es?