This paper investigates the causes of, and reactions to, the Eurozone crisis, focusing in particular on the institutional foundations of the four Southern European Eurozone countries that have encountered an acute sovereign debt crisis. Applying the basic arguments featured in the Varieties of...

Excessive fiscal spending is commonly cited as a primary cause of the current European sovereign debt crisis. We develop an alternative hypothesis which better accounts for systemic differences towards EMU countries’ exposure to market speculation: the rise of competitiveness imbalances which...

Many political scientists and economists have addressed the implications of the public sector’s sheltered status on their unions’ wage strategies vis-à-vis the government. Since the public sector is a monopoly provider of necessary and price inelastic services, conventional wisdom suggests...

Andy Rose (2000), followed by many others, has used the gravity model of bilateral trade on a large data set to estimate the trade effects of monetary unions among small countries. The finding has been large estimates: Trade among members seems to double or triple, that is, to increase by...

There is a widespread perception among the public and policy-makers that EMU carries one-way pressures for enhanced flexibility in the labour market. We discuss the theoretical basis of this by examining four mechanisms through which the establishment of the common currency and the functioning...

The regional effects of sharing a single currency on bilateral trade with other European Union member states are a contentious question. This paper examines the regional effects on trade of the set up of the euro as a common currency. It takes advantage of a gravity specification of bilateral...