In the literature on currency and banking crises it has become the standard procedure to distinguish pure currency crises, pure banking crises and combined ("twin") currency and banking crises. We show theoretically and empirically that a similar differentiation should be chosen with regard to...

The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) was established to promote the exports of low-income countries to industrialized countries in order to support their economic growth and development. However, the design of these schemes is rather complex and the effects of GSP have been found to be...

The well-known question whether regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the multilateral trading system (MTS) are "strangers, friends, or foes" (Bhagwati and Panagariya, 1996) has gained new importance with the widespread proliferation of RTAs in recent years. Based on an extensive data set which...

World trade has grown exponentially during the last 60 years. Admittedly, it is not clear if this development can be assigned to international trade agreements like the World Trade Organization or the Generalized System of Preferences as previous empirical studies found contradicting results. In...

The paper discusses the stabilizing potential of fiscal policy in a dynamic general-equilibrium model of monetary union. We consider a small open economy inside the currency area. We analyze the demand and supply effects of direct taxation, indirect taxation and government spending and derive...

This paper develops a market-based approach to implement so called Eurobonds, i.e. common sovereign debt securities of European Monetary Union (EMU) countries. By applying an asset-backed security (ABS) approach positive implications of a common bond can be achieved and negative incentives (e.g....

Despite major recent advance in the literature on financial crises, the key role of central banks in the dynamics of financial crises are still not well understood. Our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of financial crises by explicitly modeling the strategic options...

The European Council selects the EMU participants by a vote with a qualified majority. These voting requirements influence the benefit-cost-considerations of the EU states and may make it necessary to loosen the convergence criteria and/or to grant side payments, in order to achieve the...