With the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union and the euro, the national government debt of eurozone member-states became credit sensitive. While the potentially destabilizing impact of adverse cyclical conditions on credit-sensitive debt was seriously underestimated, the design was...

With the global crisis, the policy stance around the world has been shaken by massive government and central bank efforts to prevent the meltdown of markets, banks, and the economy. Fiscal packages, in varied sizes, have been adopted throughout the world after years of proclaimed fiscal...

The World Bank has counted well over a hundred systemic banking crises in the last quarter of a century. Explanations considered in the vast literature on the subject fall in two categories: real shocks (including fundamental macroeconomic imbalances and bank mismanagement) and monetary shocks...

The desirability of a transactions tax in the foreign exchange market, or Tobin tax, depends on whether the tax deters short-term, destabilizing trade. While supporters claim that the tax would be a deterrent for short-term capital flows, critics contend that the deterrent capability of the tax...

Notwithstanding the modified ECB practice that saved the day, the euro area is failing to restore economic prosperity. The problem is visibly political, yet an effective solution must be economically viable. This essay articulates the reason behind the prolonged deflationary bias of euro area...

With the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union and the euro, the national government debt of eurozone member-states became credit sensitive. While the potentially destabilizing impact of adverse cyclical conditions on credit-sensitive debt was seriously underestimated, the design was...

The article is a comment on Alessandrini and Fratianni (2015) (A&F), on how can the euro area cope with inter-regional differences in the absence of fiscal union. A&F develop a model to support their proposals, against which twomain remarks are raised here. First, diverging current account...

How does Nassim Taleb's notion of uncertainty compare with Keynes's? In describing "black swan events" as rare, consequential, unforecastable events, Taleb has stressed how statistical risk differs from intractable uncertainty. This difference had been similarly underscored by Keynes in his...