The paper scrutinizes the reasons for the European debt crisis, the implications for TARGET2 imbalances and options for surplus liquidity absorption within an asymmetric EMU. It is argued that starting from the turn of the millennium diverging fiscal policy paths and diverging unit labour costs...

This article deals with the macro-economics of the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System (TARGET2). It is shown that TARGET2 contrib-utes to a misallocation of real resources. The discussion high-lights that there are no tendencies for rebalancing TARGET2...

In this paper, we first present the state and the development of the European capital and current account imbalances. We demonstrate how large the heterogeneity among European countries is and that clustering here different types of countries is possible, but that it leads to different groupings...

In diesem Beitrag werfen wir einen Blick auf die 'TARGET2-Debatte', die insbesondere durch die Beiträge von Hans-Werner Sinn (exemplarisch: 2011a-d), John Whittaker (2011), und Ende letzten Jahres bereits durch Peter Garber (2010) initiiert worden ist. Die fachliche Auseinandersetzung hat auf...

The Eurosystem has been pursuing a crisis management policy for more than four years now. This policy aims primarily at maintaining financial stability in the euro area by providing vast liquidity support to commercial banks that are operating in nationally segmented banking systems. As a side...

Diverging fiscal policy paths, housing booms and diverging unit labour costs were driving forces of rising intra-European current account imbalances, which were underpinned by low interest rates. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the adjustment of intra-EMU current account imbalances has been...

The paper analyzes developments in TARGET2 imbalances within the euro area since 2007, from two perspectives: national central banks' balance sheets and countries' balance of payments (BoP). We examine the relationship between TARGET2 balances and the Eurosystem liquidity provision, analyzing...