This paper reviews the performance of the euro area since the euro's launch 20 years ago. It argues that the euro crisis has exposed existential flaws in the euro regime. Intra-area divergences and the corresponding buildup of imbalances had remained unchecked prior to the crisis. As those...

Societies often rely on simple rules to restrict the size and behavior of governments. When fiscal and monetary policies are conducted by a discretionary and profligate government, I find that revenue ceilings vastly outperform debt, deficit and monetary rules, both in effectiveness at curbing...

This paper explores the reasons for the suboptimal fiscal-monetary policy mix in the euro area in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and ways in which the status quo can be improved. A comparison of fiscal and monetary policies and of economic outcomes in the euro area and the United...

The recent financial and economic crisis has triggered bold and diverse policy responses to prevent further, sharper and prolonged adverse effects to the financial and the real sector. The measures for alleviating the cycle were a feature both of the advanced and the emerging and developing...

The subsidiarity principle governing the collection of statistical data in a monetary union may result in asymmetrical information. The national governments may be tempted to distort their economic and financial data communicated to the union’s central bank in order to influence its monetary...

This paper studies the links between of financial soundness indicators and financial crisis episodes controlling for several macroeconomic and fiscal variables in 20 OECD. We focus our attention on aggregate capital adequacy, asset quality and bank profitability indicators compiled by the IMF....

The study discusses central bank’s and government’s behaviour in a small open economy with a strong autonomous monetary policy and fiscal policy restricted by fiscal policy rule. Composed model thus fully corresponds to the Czech reality, where the Czech National Bank’s independency is...

This paper seeks to understand the interplay between banks, bank regulation, sovereign default risk and central bank guarantees in a monetary union. I assume that banks can use sovereign bonds for repurchase agreements with a common central bank, and that their sovereign partially backs up any...

The Russian economy has recovered from the 2008—2009 crisis and is now running close to its potential. While demand pressures risk overheating the economy in the short run, medium-term growth prospects are constrained. To address these challenges Russia should continue to strengthen the...