The past few months have exposed serious problems in relation to Europe’s ability to cope with financial stress. Placing the new Financial Stability funds on a permanent basis, in the form of a new European Monetary Fund will be required if Europe is to deal effectively with the serious debt...

In any dataset with individual forecasts of economic variables, some forecasters will perform better than others. However, it is possible that these ex post differences reflect sampling variation and thus overstate the ex ante differences between forecasters. In this paper, we present a simple...

This paper examines how banks respond to shocks to their equity. If banks react to equity shocks by more than proportionately adjusting liabilities, then this will tend to generate a positive correlation between asset growth and leverage growth. However, we show that in the presence of changes...

The introduction of the euro meant that countries with sovereign debt problems could not use monetization and devaluation as a way to prevent default. The institutional structures of the euro were also widely thought to prevent a country in difficulties being bailed out by other euro members or...

This paper provides an overview of Ireland’s macroeconomic performance over the past decade. In addition, to presenting the underlying facts about the boom, bust and (currently limited) recovery, the paper also discusses some common fallacies and misrepresentations of economic events in...

type="main" xml:id="ecop12025-abs-0001" <title type="main">Summary</title> <p>The eurozone's TARGET2 payments system has featured heavily in academic and popular discussions of the euro crisis. Some of this commentary has described the system as being responsible for a ‘secret bailout’ of Europe's periphery. Another...</p>

type="main" <title type="main">Summary</title> <p>Recent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political...</p>

type="main" xml:id="twec12148-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>The empirical finding that exporting firms are more productive on average than non-exporters has provoked a large theoretical literature based on models such as Melitz (<link href="#twec12148-bib-0022"/>), where more productive firms are more likely to overcome costs associated...</p>

This is a briefing paper the author distributed to the Irish parliamentary committee responsible for finance and public expenditure. It describes the balance sheet of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the organisation that was formed by combining Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Buildings...

The European Commission has recently proposed a new package of reforms of the Stability and Growth Pact. The package contains a number of good proposals. In particular, the increased focus on debt ratios is a very positive suggestion though this should be strengthened further. However, some of...