The paper provides an account of the meaning and implications of TARGET2 in the eurozone (EZ) balance of payments crisis. In this context, it discusses Hans-Werner Sinn's thesis about a stealth bail-out of the EZ periphery by the ECB from a heterodox perspective. Financial liberalisation, a...

In February 2015, the European Commission published a Green Paper in which it put forward the goal to 'build a true single market for capital' for all European Union member states by 2019. The present paper argues that there is no realistic prospect of achieving this goal given that the Green...

This paper examines whether macroeconomic convergence is an automatic outcome of forming a currency union by combining an analysis of real interest parity (RIP) in the EU with the argument for the endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) criteria. Using the DF-GLS and the CIPS* panel unit...

In the current debate on the reasons and implications of the Greek and Irish euro crisis, the intra-European current account imbalances have gained rising attention. Whereas Greece and Ireland struggle for austerity in private and public spending, Germany is urged to reduce its current account...

Der Beitrag analysiert die inner-europäischen Leistungsbilanzungleichgewichte auf der Grundlage der Theorie der optimalen Währungsräume. Wir zeigen, dass die deutsche Wiedervereinigung nicht nur zur EWS-Krise 1992/93 führte, sondern auch der Ursprung der derzeitigen europäischen...

This paper investigates the causes behind the euro debt crisis, particularly Germany's role in it. It is argued that the crisis is not primarily a "sovereign debt crisis" but rather a (twin) banking and balance of payments crisis. Intra-area competitiveness and current account imbalances, and...

To deal with changes of capitalized seignorage due to EMU, we supply the still missing capital-theoretical framework. We show that seignorage pooling of EMU is composed of two components, a dynamic component and a static component. By its dynamic component, the pool provides insurance against...

We compare the convergence with German monetary policy of the Balkan and Mediterranean country candidates for EU membership with that of countries that have recently joined the EU. Significant linkages exist between German base money stock and that of recent members of the EU; the same holds...

This paper investigates Germany's vulnerability to the ongoing Euroland crisis. In 2010-11, Germany experienced a strong rebound from the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The Euroland crisis then meant record low interest rates and a depressed euro that boosted German extra-area exports. But...

We analyze real interest rate convergence among six industrialized countries in between 1975M1-2011M3 within a multi-country framework by means of a dynamic latent factor model. The real interest rates are decomposed into permanent and transitory factors, and country-specific components....