The global financial and economic crisis in 2008-09 followed by a "Euro crisis" – not a crisis of the Euro but a sovereign debt (and/or banking) crisis in some Euro countries – forced to reforms of the asymmetric policy design of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Starting with ad-hoc...

With a large-scale econometric world model we derive policy multipliers and the parameters for the utility functions for 10 EMU countries and for the ECB. The gains from cooperation are calculated by comparing two equilibria, a Nash and a cooperative equilibrium. The cooperative equilibrium is...

Overall, the ECB managed monetary policy quite satisfactory in the first phase of EMU. Nevertheless, this paper asks whether monetary policy could not have been improved. In the last three years, Euroland was confronted with the first external shock. Oil prices increased considerably, leading to...

Austria has gained economically from all integration steps taken by the European Union over the past 15 years (eastern opening, Austria's accession to the EU and its currency union, EU enlargement). With some of these steps occurring in parallel, its effects have similarly overlapped. Eastern...