In this paper we provide empirical evidence documenting the nature of the Eurozone’s fragility. We find that during periods of turmoil, financial markets have tended to impose strong programs of austerity on member countries of the Eurozone. This confirms the evidence we found in a previous...

In this paper we test two theories of the determination of the government bond spreads in a monetary union. The first one is based on the efficient market theory. According to this theory, the surging spreads observed from 2010 to the middle of 2012 were the result of deteriorating fundamentals...

We test the hypothesis that the government bond markets in the Eurozone are more fragile and more susceptible to self-fulfilling liquidity crises than in stand-alone countries. We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the peripheral Eurozone countries during...

We analyse the similarities and the differences in the fragility of the European Monetary System (EMS) and the Eurozone. We test the hypothesis that in the EMS, the fragility arose from the absence of a credible lender of last resort in the foreign exchange markets; whereas in the Eurozone, it...

We argue first that the Eurozone crisis has left a legacy of unsustainable government debt levels. These will continue to exert a deflationary dynamics in the Eurozone except if creditor nations are willing to contemplate a debt restructuring. Second, we argue that the institutional innovations...

This paper finds evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the PIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) in the eurozone during 2010-11 was disconnected from underlying increases in the debt-to-GDP ratios, and was the result of negative market sentiments that...

This paper analyzes two claims that have been made about the Target2 payment system. The first one is that this system has been used to support unsustainable current account deficits of Southern European countries. The second one is that the large accumulation of Target2 claims by the Bundesbank...

We test the hypothesis that the government bond markets in the Eurozone are more fragile and more susceptible to self-fulfilling liquidity crises than in stand-alone countries. We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the PIGS countries in the Eurozone during...

We analyze the similarities and the differences in the fragility of the European Monetary system (EMS) and the Eurozone. We test the hypothesis that in the EMS the fragility arose from the absence of a credible lender of last resort in the foreign exchange markets while in the Eurozone it was...