The recent fears of a sovereign debt crisis have spurred interest in the sustainability of public debt. There are two different approaches to the assessment of sustainability: the use of sustainability gap indicators (Blanchard et al., 1990) and the time series approach (Trehan and Walsh, 1988)....

This paper introduces the Data Collection Task Force of the South-East European Monetary History Network (SEEMHN DCTF) and its first result. Good policy making should be grounded on good data. To this end, the SEEMHN DCTF works since 2006 towards establishing a SEE macro history database of 19th...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the sustainability of public debt in Italy during the last 150 years (1861-2010) by employing a database containing several statistical novelties: new time series estimates of public debt and GDP (respectively Bank of Italy and Baffigi, 2011) and an original...

Der Euro ist ein intensiv diskutiertes Thema, sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch in der Politik. Während die einen mit ihm eine glorreiche Zukunft Europas prophezeien, betrachten ihn andere als Übel, das den alten Kontinent ins Verderben ziehen wird. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht der Frage...

In den letzten drei Jahrhunderten wurde mehrmals der Versuch gestartet, eine stabile Währungsunion aus souveränen Staaten zu bilden. Vier historische Beispiele sollen durch ihre Entstehungsgeschichte und ihren Zerfall Aufschluss darüber geben, welche Gründe und Ursachen die Instabilität von...

Does the concept of General Purpose Technologies help explain periods of faster and slower productivity advance in economies? The paper develops a new comparative data set on the usage of electricity in the manufacturing sectors of the USA, Britain, France, Germany and Japan and proceeds to...

We propose a joint dating of the Italian business and credit cycle on a historical horizon, by applying a local turning-point dating algorithm to the level of the variables. Along with short cycles, corresponding to traditional business cycle fluctuations, we also investigate medium cycles,...

Two centuries of Greek debt crises highlight the pitfalls of relying on external financing. Since its independence in 1829, the Greek government has defaulted four times on its external creditors - with striking historical parallels. Each crisis is preceded by a period of heavy borrowing from...

The paper analyses the development in inflation in Denmark during the last century. New annual input-output based time-series data for the underlying domestic inflation in Denmark 1903-2002 is constructed by stripping the development in the private consumption deflator for price increases caused...

The book is an attempt to make a presentation of the development of international finance and economy in Bulgaria from mainly a historical perspective, until the recession after 2008. The detailed view of facts allows to make new interpretation of the processes and leads to some surprising...