During the first two years of monetary union, the euro's weakness surprised most market participants. Explanations proliferated ranging from fundamentals such as differences in growth prospects to psychological factors such as herd behaviour, but no single story fully accounts for the observed...

Deutschland wird aufgrund seiner Leistungsbilanzüberschüsse als Mitverursacher der Krise in der Europäischen Währungsunion angesehen. Tatsächlich entfiel auf die Krisenländer nur ein kleiner Teil der deutschen Überschüsse, die seit 2007 bereits deutlich abgenommen haben. Den...

This paper examines the relationship between the exchange rate regime and the pace of current account adjustment. The panel data set we refer to includes 11 catching-up countries from central, eastern and south-eastern Europe between 1994 and 2007. The exchange rate regime is measured by a...

We examine the hypothesis that one of the fundamental factors behind the Euro Area (EA) crisis is the reversal of intra-EA capital flows between the ‘core' and ‘periphery' economies. We compile a data set on aggregate and disaggregate gross and net intra-EA flows between Germany and Greece,...

Using the financial balances accounting identity, we analyze whether there is evidence in recent national accounting data and the projections of the Stability Programmes (SP), that the focus on fiscal deficits to the exclusion of other economic variables risks further deterioration of the euro...

This paper examines the effects of negative interest rate policies (NIRP) on foreign exchange and equity markets of eight European countries and Japan. NIRP announcement effects on currency depreciation are shown to be transitory. In contrast, on the day of NIRP implementation, both currency and...

The eurozone sovereign debt crisis, characterized by enormous debt burdens faced by its weakest economies, has also induced a parallel credit crunch and illiquidity concerns for European banks. Bank holdings of sovereign debt issued by peripheral eurozone countries have dropped in value and are...

The eurozone, composed of 17 countries which have adopted the euro as their currency, has been struggling with an apparently-intractable crisis over the enormous debts faced by its weakest economies and by countries impacted by the bursting of the housing boom in the past global recession of...

The paper evaluates current account dynamics in countries with different exchange rate regimes within the EU. In this, the empirical analysis explicitly differentiates between countries with a flexible and a fixed exchange rate regime and members of a monetary union. In addition, we model the...

Countries in the euro area periphery borrowed heavily from abroad in the years leading up to the sovereign debt crisis, largely to finance increased consumption and housing investment. When the crisis hit in 2010, capital flight by private investors forced these countries to bring domestic...