We study the apparent disconnect between what countries announce to be their exchange rate regime and what they de facto implement. Even though discrepancies between announcements and de facto polices are frequent, there is a lack of understanding of actual patterns and underlying reasons. We...

We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments’ popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging...

Worldwide demographic changes and their implications for governments, corporations, and individuals have been in the focus of public interest for quite some time due to the fiscal risk related to adequate retirement benefits. Through a more detailed analysis of mortality data an additional type...

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Aufarbeitung der Hintergründe der Subprime-Krise sowie der nachfolgenden internationalen Banken- und Finanzkrisen. Auf dieser Basis werden Vor-schläge diskutiert, wie die erkannten Schwachstellen im Finanzsystem repariert bzw. behoben werden...

In this paper, I will discuss this question with special emphasis on the European experience. The European Union (EU) qualifies for an interesting case study because of two reasons. First, it has been founded more than 40 years ago in 1957. Second, its ongoing process of deep Integration is...

The cost-effectiveness of unilateral emission abatement can be seriously hampered by emission leakage. We assess three widely-discussed proposals for leakage reduction targeted at energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries: border tax adjustments, output-based allocation and industry...

In the abscence of a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, individual countries have introduced national climate policies. Unilateral action involves the risk of relocating emissions to regions without climate regulations, i.e., emission leakage. A major channel for leakage are...

We look at the different ways of aggregating dual use products exports to give the security perception of exporter countries and their consistency with the relevant export control regimes. Also, we analyze different models of export controls highlighting the role of the perception of security,...

The financial crisis and Great Recession have prompted a rethink of monetary policy and central banking. The status quo insider rethink focuses on the role of monetary policy in dealing with asset bubbles; making the central bank the banking system supervisor; and how to deal with the problem of...