Today, the problem facing the United States is not whether cryptocurrencies are money or “thin air,” Iran's nuclear ambition, or COVID-19 induced recession; it is China's fast acceleration in becoming a game changer in the world order that the U.S. has dominated for more than a century....

This paper explores the hypothesis that the sources of economic and financial crises differ from non-crisis business cycle fluctuations. We employ Markov-switching Bayesian vector autoregressions (MS-BVARs) to gather evidence about the hypothesis on a long annual U.S. sample running from 1890 to...

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (i.e. Basel I, II & III), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (i.e. Financial Sector Assessment Program), the World Trade Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the...

There was only Bitcoin in January 2009, but now over 3,000 altcoins are traded; as of October 25, the combined market cap of 3,047 cryptocurrencies is $248 billion. Bitcoin (at $9,285.89) with a market cap of $170 billion still dominates 68.4% of the cryptocurrency market. Both market cap figures...

This paper assesses the role of financial variables in real economic fluctuations, in view of analysing the link between financial cycles and business cycles at the global level. A Global VAR modelling approach is used to first assess the contribution of credit and asset price variables to real...

This paper discusses the role of economic and monetary analysis in the monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB). Both areas of analysis have evolved since the 2003 strategy review. Economic analysis has assigned an increasingly relevant role to the Eurosystem and ECB staff...

The main aim of this paper is to apply a method based on fundamentals ─ which has already been applied in the stock market analysis ─ to detect boom/bust in the housing market, with a focus on the euro area. In this context, an underlying model is developed and tested. It turns out that the...

This paper discusses the role of economic and monetary analysis in the monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB). Both areas of analysis have evolved since the 2003 strategy review. Economic analysis has assigned an increasingly relevant role to the Eurosystem and ECB staff...

We test the performance of a host of real and financial variables as early warning indicators for costly aggregate asset price boom/bust cycles, using data for 18 OECD countries.A 'real time' signalling approach is used to predict asset price booms that have serious real economy consequences. We...