The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 crystallized the underlying imbalances that are currently acting to tear apart the Euro area monetary and fiscal systems by focusing markets and public attention on the core cause of the overall Euro crisis, the insolvency of the Euro area member-states...

We study the cross-border impact of quantitative easing (QE) in the major advanced economies, especially on emerging market economies. We first examine the cross-border financial market impact of central bank announcements of asset purchase programmes. We find marked QE announcement effects on...

This paper discusses the literature which associates the economic characteristics of EMU with arguments of the optimum currency area (OCA) theory and asks for missing capstones that would meliorate EMU to eventually resemble an OCA. As potential candidates for such building blocks, some sort of...

The recent Global Financial Crisis (2008-2010) and the accompanying Great Recession (2008-2011) show that the level and the rate of monetary and financial systems integration deployed within the Euro area is not sustainable in the long run. Instead of acting as a buffer against external shocks...

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece represents a very interesting case in which the Greek government succeeded in transforming domestic fiscal deficit problem, overspending and fear of free market reforms into a European challenge consistent with justifiable concerns about the sustainability of...

Inflation differentials in the euro area have been persistent since the adoption of the single currency. This paper analyzes the impact of product and labor market regulation on inflation in a sample of 11 countries. The results show that, after the adoption of the euro, product market...

This paper assesses the contribution of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Germany's ongoing economic crisis, a vicious circle of decline in which the country has become stuck since the early 1990s. It is argued that the ECB continues the Bundesbank tradition of asymmetric policymaking: the bank...

This paper assesses the contribution of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Germany's ongoing economic crisis, a vicious circle of decline in which the country has become stuck since the early 1990s. It is argued that the ECB continues the Bundesbank tradition of asymmetric policymaking: the bank...

This paper investigates the effect of ECB asset purchases on inflation expectations in the euro area, as measured by the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. To identify the effects on individual expectations we adopt a panel approach, where the Eurosystem Asset Purchase Programme (APP)...

Global excess liquidity roaming the world's financial markets (or its sudden absence) is sometimes believed to limit sovereign monetary policy even in large economies such as the euro area. However, there is still discussion about what constitutes global excess liquidity and how exactly it...