Along time the European Union (EU) has been pointed as the most succeeded example of regional integration. Now, this example has been cruelly shaken by the EZ (Euro Zone) crisis, originating increasing doubts about the integration process. It is evident that the proposed solutions for attacking...

This paper argues that the loose monetary policy of two of the world’s most important financial institutions-the US Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank-were ultimately responsible for the outburst of global financial crisis of 2008 - 09. Unusually low interest rates in 2001 -...

We introduce a methodology for measuring default risk connectedness that is based on an out-of-sample variance decomposition of model forecast errors. The out-of-sample nature of the procedure leads to "realized" measures which, in practice, respond more quickly to crisis occurrences than those...

On 4 March 2011, SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum and the National Bank of Poland jointly organised a conference on the theme of: "Monetary Policy after the Crisis". Following a call for papers with a large number of submissions, the scientific committee selected 9 papers, which...

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is the permanent crisis resolution mechanism for euro area countries. We analyze the costs of the current (suboptimal) refinancing design of the ESM and evaluate an alternative asset-backed securities (ABS) structure under different scenarios. Our...