Mit dem anstehenden Staatsanleihen-Kaufprogramm 'Outright Monetary Transactions' (OMT) der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB) in Verbindung mit dem kürzlich eingesetzten Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus (ESM) hat das Thema 'monetäre Staatsfinanzierung' viel Aufmerksamkeit erfahren (z.B....

Latin America has been strongly affected by the international crisis and recession since late 2008. In comparison to historical experience, how has Latin America coped with the global crisis, which has been the role of different transmission mechanisms, and how have the region's structural and...

This paper presents a model addressing the conditions under which financial instability arises in the event of household debt. The model addresses two main cases. First, household debt is affected by functional income distribution. Second, household debt is affected by credit supply and depends...

The global financial crisis of 2007-09 has led to an intensive research program analyzing a wide range of issues related to financial crises. This paper presents a summary of a forthcoming book, Financial Crises: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses, that includes 19 contributions...

We review the competing explanations of the 2007-2008 global crisis, recall how governments around the world had to depart from established policy stances, and reflect on the legacy of the crisis both in terms of future challenges and changes in policy doctrine. The G-20 has addressed important...

This paper looks at the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), where economies have been most dramatically hit by the global crisis and its impact is likely to be most long-lasting, especially among poor and vulnerable groups. Using...

This article discusses the importance of ideology, institutions, politics, and economic knowledge for forecasting economic policies and their impact on macroeconomic developments. Following a general discussion of those factors, the article illustrates their forecasting usefulness by drawing on...

This study analyzes the trends in the financial sector over the past 30 years, and argues that unsupervised financial innovations and lenient government regulation are at the root of the current financial crisis and recession. Combined with a long period of economic expansion during which...

The financial and economic crisis in the Euro area has revealed a number of important flaws in the economic policy framework in Europe. On the one hand, the imbalances, which have dominated European development since the introduction of the euro, are not sustainable; and this is more serious in a...

Italy’s policy of fiscal consolidation and growth-friendly structural reforms has substantially improved its economic prospects, but the adverse sentiment that the country has faced in the sovereign bond market over the past years has deep roots. It reflects lingering anxieties over the euro...