Since the European Council of June 2012, ‘Banking Union' is a key item for the EU's policy agenda. This contribution outlines the state of the policy debate – identifying the elements that are missing but important from a theoretical viewpoint. We make concrete proposals as to how the...

If actual unemployment affects the NAIRU through a hysterisis effect, the disinflation involved in reducing a country's inflation rate to that of its future partners in a monetary union could produce a long term cost to monetary union in the form of a lasting rise in the NAIRU. This note sets...

We investigate whether unemployment fluctuations generate predictability in the cross-section of currency excess returns. We find that currencies with lower growth in the unemployment rate appreciate while currencies with higher growth in the unemployment rate depreciate. As a result, an...

This article explores the trends that define the key social welfare moments for the countries of the western Balkans. The mounting Eurozone crisis and the interdependence of economies are both important phenomena that condition the need for intervention in the labour sector of the peninsula....

This paper explores the Greek economy since 1974, before and after joining the Economic and Monetary Union and some of the problems that the current global and European debt crises have created to Greek and to all European citizens. A social loss function and a partial equilibrium model are used...

History teaches valuable lessons. This article examines the performance of the stock market during various boom and bust phases over the last forty years in the United States. By doing so, four previous manias and panics scenarios are analyzed, including the 1987 black Monday crash, the Dotcom...