The paper discusses the possibility of a systemic banking crisis as a result of debt defaults, putting this risk and its impact on the economy into recent historical context. It looks at the vulnerability of the personal and business sectors to increases in borrowing rates, and at the evidence...

We survey different strategies in the transition process, and investigate their role in growth prospects. Openness, exchange rate regimes and approaches to trade and capital market liberalisation are examined. Their role in facilitating the diffusion of new products and processes to transition...

Fiscal and monetary policy framework have become increasingly popular as disenchantment with active stabilisation policy has increased. In order to maximise the gains in terms of welfare and output frameworks need to be designed to achieve targets efficiently and stabilise the volatility of the...

Oil prices have been associated with bouts of inflation and economic instability over the last 30 years, and they have been rising in recent months. We argue that the inflationary consequences of a rise in oil prices depend upon the policy response of the monetary authorities. They can...

This paper augments traditional equations for estimating export demand with a measure of technology intensity of output, and several variables capturing the impact of regional integration and global trade liberalisation programmes. Using data for a panel of 20 OECD countries it is shown that the...

We estimate the impact of financial liberalisation on consumption in 7 major industrial countries, and find a marked shift in behaviour, notably a decline in short run income elasticities and a rise in short run wealth and interest rate elasticities. A corollary is that consumption equations...

This paper addresses the issues of the sustainability of government debt stocks, and analyses how this important topic has been handled in the construction and use of large, empirically based, macromodels. It argues that governments must be solvent in a forward looking model, for a theoretically...

Output growth in the Euro Area has been disappointing since the formation of EMU. This may be the consequence of the new monetary and exchange rate arrangements, but it is necessary to remove the effects of other factors such as the growth of labour input, skills, knowledge and risk premia. This...

We argue that the choice of exchange rate regime in the process of accession to the European Union and EMU can affect the growth rate of the economy in the medium term. We discuss the effects of exchange rate choice, and of the timing of transition to EMU on the core accession countries.

The decline in output volatility in the US has been variously ascribed to changes in the policy regime reflected in inflation volatility, improved stockholding and increased international integration. We investigate output volatility in the G7 in a panel context treating these as competing...