This paper sheds new light on the growth implications of public debt introducing a dynamic panel threshold model by accounting for regime dependent intercepts and focusing on 12 Euro zone economies over the 1980-2012 period. The threshold estimates for debt are estimated by using multiple...

This paper deals with the question of what impact membership of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has had on small European states. We will also analyze whether or to what extent a large number of small member states affect the EMU itself when they vastly outnumber the large countries. We...

The Target imbalances within the Eurozone can be interpreted as a sign of a missing balance of payments adjustment mechanism for the member countries. As the Eurozone lacks a fiscal union, in economic theory it is more an exchange rate union or a system of fixed exchange rates than a monetary...

This paper discusses proposals for common euro area sovereign securities. Such instruments can potentially serve two functions: in the short-term, stabilize financialmarkets and banks and, in the medium-term, help improve the euro area economic governance framework through enhanced fiscal...

We investigate monetary-policy autonomy under different exchange-rate regimes in small, open European economies during the 1980s and 1990s. We find no systematic link between ex post monetary-policy autonomy and exchange rate regimes. This result is enforced for countries/periods with...

I revisit the potential costs and benefits for Sweden of joining the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the European Union. I first show that the Swedish business cycle since the mid-1990s has been closely correlated with the Euro area economies, suggesting that common shocks have been an...

The ECB has accepted increasing amounts of rubbish collateral since the crisis started leading to exposure to serious private sector credit risk (i.e. default risk) on its collateralised lending and reverse operations ('repo'). This has led some commentators to argue that the ECB needs 'fiscal...

The ECB has accepted increasing amounts of rubbish collateral since the crisis started leading to exposure to serious private sector credit risk (i.e. default risk) on its collateralised lending and reverse operations (repo). This has led some commentators to argue that the ECB needs fiscal...

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currency to depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weighted combination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation, such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where the weights are their effectiveness....

The article points out that monetary stability does not hinge upon formal central bank independence. The reason is that the legislator can easily restrict that independence by changing the law. Because the EU council as the true legislator does not face effective supervision by the citizens it...