This paper studies the relative pricing of euro area sovereign CDS and the underlying government bonds. Our sample comprises weekly CDS and bond spreads of ten euro area countries for the period from January 2006 to June 2010. We first compare the determinants of CDS spreads and bond spreads and...

The extended period of limited growth experienced until recently in many European countries raises the issue as to which policies could be most effective in improving their economic performance. This paper argues that further financial sector reforms may be a valuable complement to ongoing...

Four years after the introduction of the euro, this paper provides an overview of the current structure and integration of the euro area financial systems and related policy initiatives. We first compare the euro area financial structure with that of the United States and Japan. Using new and...

Seit Mai 2010 kauft die Europäische Zentralbank direkt Anleihen privater und öffentlicher Schuldner auf dem Sekundärmarkt. Markus C. Kerber, Technische Universität Berlin, vertritt die Ansicht, dass diese »neue Offenmarktpolitik« der EZB, der Erwerb von Staatsanleihen auf dem...

This paper studies the relative pricing of euro area sovereign CDS and the underlying government bonds. Our sample comprises weekly CDS and bond spreads of ten euro area countries for the period from January 2006 to June 2010. We first compare the determinants of CDS spreads and bond spreads and...

This paper examines the underlying dynamics of selected euro-area sovereign bonds by employing a factor-augmenting vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model for the first time in the literature. This methodology allows for identifying the underlying transmission mechanisms of several factors; in...

It is often disregarded that the euro is first of all a public good based on common institutions such the European Central Bank, the Governing Council and a network for executing transactions etc. Establishing a public good is fundamentally different from trade in private goods. A public good...