This Policy Contribution was prepared as a briefing paper for the European Parliament Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee’s Monetary Dialogue, entitled ‘The threat of 'currency wars': global imbalances and their effect on currencies,' held on 30 November 2010. Bruegel Fellows Jean...

Summary. Contrary to often-heard concerns, the main question regarding the future of the European single currency is not who is going to leave, but who is going to join. Three of the new EU member states want to join Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro within the next year, and...

Summary. Contrary to often-heard concerns, the main question regarding the future of the European single currency is not who is going to leave, but who is going to join. Three of the new EU member states want to join Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro within the next year, and...

[From the foreword]. What are the features of European firms that successfully compete in international markets? To what extent do they contribute to productivity and employment? What are the policies that can improve a nation’s foreign trade performance? What policies can promote the...

Studying all possible pairs of eleven major currencies and eleven portfolios in 1976-2008 we show that, when there is no leverage, carry trade is significantly profitable for most currency pairs and portfolios. Positive returns do not diminish in time providing a strong case against the...

This paper studies the transmission of monetary policy to macroeconomic variables in three new EU Member States in comparison with that in the euro area with structural time-varying coefficient vector autoregressions. In line with the Lucas Critique reduced-form models like standard VARs are not...

This paper describes the particular impacts of the financial and economic crisis on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, studies pro-cyclicality of fiscal policies, discusses the impact of the crisis on fiscal policy, and the policy response of various governments. After drawing some...

The global economic and financial crisis has raised further concerns about the euro-entry criteria, in addition to other factors, such as the effective tightening of the criteria due to the enlargement of the EU from 12 to 27 members, the highly unfavourable property of business cycle...