Regional economic development is driven by the accumulation of production factors. More traditional factors like labour and physical capital are accumulated under the law of diminishing returns. This, in turn, allows less developed regions to better perform. Recent branches of theoretical and...

This paper studies the role of financial market imperfections in the way countries' exports react to a currency depreciation. Using quarterly data for 27 developed and developing countries over the period 1990-2005, we show that the impact of a depreciation will be less positive - or even...

As economic reforms are mutually interdependent, a liberal policy package needs internal coherence. How can a coherent reform strategy be achieved for a well-balanced and functional economic system? In this paper, we analyze the relationship between financial reforms coherence and international...

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...

In the debate on global imbalances, the euro area countries did not receive much attention so far. While the current account is on balance for the entire area, divergences between individual member states have increased since the introduction of the common currency. In this paper, the imbalances...

Germany entered the euro with a current account deficit but over the entire past decade has run large and persistent current account surpluses. Besides joining the common currency, the increase of Germany's current account since the late 1990s has been accompanied by strong shifts in the...

Financial crises are usually preceded by large current account deficits. However, the channel through which international capital flows affect financial stability is hardly identified, yet. In this paper, we study the impact of current account balances on bank risk-taking making use of the...

Large trade imbalances have emerged as major policy challenges for the euro area within the last decade. As fiscal policy is the major macroeconomic policy instrument left with the individual member countries of EMU, fiscal devaluation is a highly debated policy tool to mimic the effects of an...

This paper analyses the importance of German wage moderation in the context of European imbalances. Using information from a New Keynesian small open economy model with labor market frictions, we derive sign restrictions for a wage markup shock. This information enables us to identify a German...

We use changes in Brazil s tax on capital inflows from 2006 to 2011 to test for direct portfolio effects and externalities from capital controls on investor portfolios. The analysis is structured based on information from investor interviews. We find that an increase in Brazil s tax on foreign...