This paper provides an introduction to the special issue “The Crisis in the Euro Area”. We take stock of what the euro area crisis has taught us about monetary integration. At the inception of the euro area in 1999, the main parameters of the theory of monetary integration seemed to have...

This highly topical book examines the development and future prospects for economic and monetary union in Europe. European Monetary Integration examines the background to economic and monetary union from a historical perspective that distinguishes between national and supranational currency...

During the euro-area financial crisis, interactions between sovereign spreads and credit ratings appeared to have led to self-generating feedback loops. To examine the interaction between spreads and ratings, we estimate a simultaneous two-equation model in which spreads and ratings are...

We quantify the linkages among banks’ equity performance and indicators of sovereign stress by using panel GMM to estimate a three-equation system that examines the impact of sovereign stress, as reflected in both sovereign spreads and sovereign ratings, on bank share prices. We use data for a...

We discuss the origins of the Greek financial crisis as manifested in the growing fiscal and current-account deficits since euro-area entry in 2001. We then extend a model typically used to explain risk premia to assess the extent to which credit ratings captured these premia. Next, we estimate...

We investigate the impact of the economic fundamentals, sovereign credit ratings, political uncertainty, and the ECB’s Securities Markets Program (SMP) on Greek sovereign spreads. Our findings show that sovereign downgrades and political uncertainty appear to have been drivers of the sharp...

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the profitability of Greek banks (updating Eichengreen and Gibson (2001)) using a panel of Greek banks over the extended period to 2003 instead of 1993-1998 as in the original paper. We argue that the period since 1998 has largely been one of...

This paper examines the sensitivity of investment to cash flow using a panel of UK firms in manufacturing with a view to shedding some light on the existence of a balance sheet channel or financial accelerator. In addition to examining the impact of cash flow in different subsamples based on...

This paper examines the capital flow experience of transition economies which are also prospective EU members with a view to shedding light on the likely problems they might encounter with exchange rate policy in the run up to euro area membership. We show that they have been experiencing fairly...

This paper contributes to the literature on the estimation of causal effects by providing an analytical formula for individual specific treatment effects and an empirical methodology that allows us to estimate these effects. We derive the formula from a general model with minimal restrictions,...