Almost a decade after the onset of the global financial crisis, a huge stock of nonperforming loans (NPLs) still represents a major burden for European banks' profitability and a severe headwind for credit growth at an area-wide level. While a great deal has been done to establish stricter...

This paper employs panel techniques to empirically examine the link between the competitiveness of the banking sector and real economic growth, using data from a sample of OECD economies during 1997-2010. We employ a dynamic GMM model to find that an increase in the efficiency of banks driven by...

When inflation picks up, central banks are most concerned that the de-anchoring of inflation expectations and the ignition of wage-price spirals will trigger inflation dynamic instability. However, such scenarios do not materialize in the standard New Keynesian theoretical framework for monetary...

The crucial role of current account imbalances (CAI) is widely acknowledged in the consensus narratives of the European crisis that followed the Great Recession. On the basis of this interpretation, new EU initiatives arose, in particular the so-called "Six Pack" in 2011 and the establishment of...

We examine the so-called "Neo-Fisherian" claim that, at the zero lower bound (ZLB) of the monetary policy interest rate, and the economy in a depression equilibrium, in order to restore the desired inflation rate the policy rate should be raised consistently with the Fisher equation. This claim...

The New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) epitomized by Michael Woodford's Interest and Prices (2003) is based on a system of three equations that determines the short-run dynamics of output, inflation and interest-rates. Using a feedback-rule of the interest rate to change in inflation and output...

The critical role of current account imbalances (CAI) is widely shared in the consensus narratives of the European crisis that followed the Great Recession. On the basis of this interpretation, new EU initiatives raised, in particular the so-called “Six Pack” adoption in 2011 and the...