Post-apartheid South Africa is facing three major economic problems: (1) slack economic growth, (2) high and growing unemployment and (3) among the world's highest income inequality and poverty indices. South Africa is currently caught in a macro-economic straight-jacket of tight monetary,...

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of monetary and fiscal policy in a monetary union, which is characterized by asymmetric interest rate transmission. This asymmetry gives rise to intertemporal reversals in the relative effectiveness of policy on member country outputs. The direction...

Mit einer Kombination aus wiederholten Zinssenkungen und Haushaltsdefiziten bekämpften die Vereinigten Staaten ihre jüngste Rezession. Findet in den USA eine bemerkenswerte Renaissance aktiver keynesianischer Stabilisierungspolitik statt? Können die Wirtschaftsprobleme Deutschlands durch...

In a macro-economic framework where the European Central Bank targets individual country data, the nature of strategic interactions between fiscal authorities in the euro-zone can be described as a stag hunt game with (at least) two equilibria that can be pareto-ranked. In fact we show that,...

In this paper we carry over a static version of a New Keynesian Macro Model developed in previous papers (see Bofinger, Mayer, and Wollmershäuser 2002) to a monetary union. For a similar approach see (Uhlig 2002). We will show in particular that a harmonious functioning of a monetary union...

Die internationale Finanzmarktkrise hat sich zu einer Weltwirtschaftskrise ungeahnten Ausmaßes entwickelt. Was im Jahr 2007 in den USA als Subprimekrise begann, weitete sich innerhalb kürzester Zeit zu einer globalen Krise aus, bei der es sich um die bedeutendste Krise seit der letzten...

Diverging fiscal policy paths, housing booms and diverging unit labour costs were driving forces of rising intra-European current account imbalances, which were underpinned by low interest rates. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the adjustment of intra-EMU current account imbalances has been...

In this paper, we analyze coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within the EMU by focusing, in a dynamic set-up, on asymmetries, externalities, and the existence of a multi-country context. We study how coalitions among fiscal and monetary authorities are formed and what are their...