This paper discusses the conventional view that the main cause of the current crisis is the accommodative monetary policy followed by Greenspan’s Fed in the early 2000s. It assesses the merits and the drawbacks of this view by looking at the close relationship between the role of monetary...

The present paper investigates 28 episodes of transition from a fixed to a relatively more flexible exchange rate regime, taking place together with a depreciation of the national currency by more than 25% with respect to the US dollar, in the time period between 1980 and 2013. On average, the...

The crisis in the European Monetary Union cannot be attributed simply to the growth of government deficits in its member countries. Current account imbalances between eurozone members and the resulting accumulation of external private and public credit and debt appear to be further causes of...

One of the more debated interpretations of the economic crisis that started in 2007–08 is based on the 'Taylor rule' equation, namely the idea that over the period 2002–05 the Fed has implemented a low-interest policy that has led to the housing bubble and finally to the 'Great Recession'....

Messori’s paper analyzes the impact of the recent crises on the teaching of macroeconomics. In contrast with what happened during the Thirties, today we do not have a new macroeconomic paradigm. This is why the mainstream textbook of Blanchard, Amighini, Giavazzi (2010) remains irreplaceable...

We propose a new criticism of Frank Hahn's attempt to prove that the surplus approach constitutes no more than a 'special case' of the neoclassical model of intertemporal general equilibrium. In particular, we show that Hahn's 'special case' is vitiated by the paradox of determining the past as...

<i> Collateral Affects of Disinflation in Italy </i> (di Emiliano Brancaccio, Daniela Marconi) - ABSTRACT:The prolonged Italian disinflation ended in 1997 has often been considered as a sort of prize for collective sacrifices. We provide a different view on disinflation, based on the analysis of the...

An alternative interpretation of trade imbalances between member countries of the European Monetary Union is put forward with respect to Blanchard and Giavazzi (2002). It is argued that one of the causes of the present imbalances in foreign accounts lies in disparities as regards the...