Against the background of the emergence of macroeconomic imbalances within the European Monetary Union (EMU), we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard...

This study presents a cost-benefit analysis of euro adoption for the case of Bulgaria. Based on a review of existing similar studies for other East European EU member states, it outlines the basic types of potential costs and benefits of euro adoption, and applies them to the specific Bulgarian...

Even before the financial crisis of 2007/08, there were significant questions about Europe's long-term growth prospects. After a long period of catching up with US levels of labour productivity, euro area productivity growth had, from the mid-1990s onwards, fallen significantly behind. Using...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real ex-change rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange...