This article reveals a neglected aspect of macroeconomic indicators – their integrative power as vehicles to deepen European integration. It focusses on the euro area fiscal stance which provides guidance on the overall direction of fiscal policy in the euro area. Debtor countries, the ECB and...

There is evidence for a strong demand for safety, both steady and inelastic. A sudden loss of safe assets played a key role in the financial crisis and European sovereign debt crisis. I show that a common fiscal policy can benefit all member states of a monetary union by offering a more...

This paper investigates the differences between directly and indirectly seasonally adjusted aggregates. This difference is derived analytically for linear seasonal adjustment methods. GDP data for five European countries and three classes of seasonal adjustment methods are used to show...

Countries in a monetary union can adjust to shocks either through internal or external mechanisms. We quantitatively assess for the European Union a number of relevant mechanisms suggested by Mundell’s optimal currency area theory, and compare them to the United States. For this purpose, we...