The Eurosystem’s TARGET2 payments system has featured heavily in academic and popular discussions in recent years. Much of this commentary had described the system as being responsible for a “secret bailout” of Europe’s periphery which has led to huge credit risks for the Bundesbank...

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...

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...

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 institutions may be...

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...

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...

The slowdown in the US economy in 2008, and in the housing mark et in particular, has been accompanied by a sharp fall in house prices and a glut of homes for sale on the market. While the idea that this overhang of dwellings for sale should place downward pressure on house prices is intuitive,...

The introduction of the euro meant that countries with sovereign debt problems could not use monetisation 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...