Negative interest rates were once seen as impossible outside the realm of economic theory. However, several central banks have recently adopted negative policy rates. The Federal Reserve is coming under increasing pressure to follow suit in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. This paper...

Austria, Finland and Sweden became members of the EU in 1995. This paper examines how support for the euro and trust in the European Central Bank (ECB) have evolved in these three countries since their introduction at the turn of the century. Support for the euro in the two euro-area members...

John Maynard Keynes became world famous with the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919, a harsh critique of the Versailles peace treaty. As a consequence, Keynes was nominated by German professors in economics for the Nobel Peace Prize three years in a row, 1922, 1923 and...

This paper examines the Swedish record of competition in the supply of bank notes in the 19th century. Between 1831 and 1902, private commercial banks, organized as partnerships with unlimited liability for their owners, issued notes competing with the notes of the Riksbank, the bank owned by...

The EU's fiscal rules, set out in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 and the Stability and Growth Pact of 1997, are anchored to GDP. The debt ceiling and the deficit threshold are set to 60 percent and 3 percent of GDP, respectively. Recently, prominent economists and policymakers, have argued that...

The theoretical foundation of inflation targeting was laid out by the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) in his groundbreaking treatise, Interest and Prices, published originally in German in 1898. Here he proposed price stability as the rule for monetary policy. Today, inflation...

The COVID-19 pandemic had disastrous effects on health and economic activity worldwide, including in the Euro Area. The application of mandatory lockdowns contributed to a sharp fall in production and a rise in unemployment, inducing an expansionary fiscal and monetary response. Using a uniquely...

Crises are a major driving force behind cooperation in the European Union. This holds also for monetary and fiscal policy. During severe crises, cooperation has been enlarged and intensified. The recent covid-19 pandemic is a clear example of this pattern. The pandemic has had huge impact on the...

This paper gives an account of the Swedish financial crisis covering the period 1985-2000, dealing with financial deregulation and the boom in the late 1980s, the bust and the financial crisis in the early 1990s, the recovery from the crisis and the bank resolution policy adopted during the...

What is the long-run relationship between monetary and fiscal policies? This paper provides an answer by examining a large set of data covering major economies during the past 115 years. The evidence suggests the existence of a close interaction between the monetary regime, that is the behaviour...