Germany and the United States pursued different economic strategies to minimise the impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on the labour market. Germany focused on safeguarding existing jobs through the use of internal flexibility measures, especially short-time work (STW). The United States relied on...

A measure of the degree of debt monetisation is constructed for its impact on the business cycle to be studied in a standard VAR model. Debt monetisation is hardly expansionary, as it raises public demand that crowds out almost as much demand from the private sector. However, it generates...

While the EU recovery plan provides a useful step in alleviating the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis and achieving further European integration, a permanent fiscal stabilization capacity dealing with major crises is still missing. Such a EU-wide stabilization function would be in...

We simulate the fiscal stimulus packages set up by the German government to alleviate the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic in a dynamic New Keynesian multi-sector general equilibrium model. We find that, cumulated over 2020-2022, output losses relative to steady state can be reduced by more than 4...

We analyse measures of internal flexibility taken to safeguard employment during the Coronavirus Crisis in comparison to the Great Recession. Cyclical working-time reductions are again a major factor in safeguarding employment. Whereas during the Great Recession all working-time instruments...

We analyze in this whitepaper a way of addressing both targeting and financing in a direct payment (or “stimulus check”) program to provide households with additional liquidity during the economic downturn associated with the COVID-19 virus: by allowing voluntary loans to individuals in...

Economic crises produce rapid and sizable shifts in the demand for social support. Means-tested cash transfers, such as "social assistance" programmes and related minimum-income benefits (MIB) typically function as benefits of last-resort, filling some of the support gaps left by other...

Various countries have implemented transfer programs to individuals since the Covid-19 outbreaks. However, the extent to which such transfers alleviate economic recessions is unclear. This paper analyzes a South Korean program, which provided vouchers redeemable only at small local businesses....

The aim of the article is to clarify the controversies surrounding the relationship between inflation and unemployment in the three most economically significant countries in the world (apart from China), namely the United States, Japan, and Germany, during the coronavirus pandemic (from January...