Baldursson, Fridrik, Mar, Portes, Richard, Thorlaksson, Eirikur, Elis, (2016), “All’s Well that Ends Well? Resolving Iceland’s Failed Banks”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, March Iceland’s capital controls were imposed in October 2008 in order to prevent massive capital flight and a complete collapse of the exchange rate. The controls have not been lifted yet; until recently this was primarily because of the risk of large outflows of domestic holdings of …Read More

Equiza-Goni, Juan, Faraglia, Elisa, Oikonomou, Rigas, (2016), “Union Debt Management”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, March We study the role of government debt maturity in a monetary union in the absence of fiscal transfers across countries. Our key finding is that fiscal hedging is only possible when spending represents an aggregate shock in the union. In the case of idiosyncratic disturbances in spending it is not possible to target a …Read More

Chortareas, Georgios, Logothetis, Vassileios, Magkonis, Georgios, Zekente, Kalliopi-Maria, (2016), “The effect of banking supervision on central bank preferences: Evidence from panel data”, Economics Letters, Volume 140, March We examine the effects of banking supervisory architecture on central bank preferences, quantified through a recently proposed measure of central bank conservatism. Using a dynamic panel data specification we document that central banks serving both monetary policy and banking supervision functions are less inflation conservative …Read More

Crescenzi, Riccardo, Luca, Davide, Milio, Simona, (2016), “The geography of the economic crisis in Europe: national macroeconomic conditions, regional structural factors and short-term economic performance”, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, March 2016 This article explores the linkages between pre-2008 crisis national macroeconomic conditions, regional resistance factors and depth of the crisis in the regions of the EU27. The results suggest that only a limited set of macroeconomic factors shape the regional …Read More

Papadopoulos, Orestis, (2016), “Economic crisis and youth unemployment: Comparing Greece and Ireland”, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 23 February Both Greece and Ireland have long suffered high youth unemployment rates and have been pressured to restructure their employment and social systems under the European Employment Strategy. Problems were aggravated by the harsh conditions imposed by the Troika following bail-outs. Yet there was significant divergence in youth employment outcomes between Greece and …Read More

Rozenov, Rossen, (2016), “Optimal Fiscal Adjustment under Uncertainty“, IMF Working Paper, No. 16/69, 17 March The paper offers a non-probabilistic framework for representation of uncertainty in the context of a simple linear-quadratic model of fiscal adjustment. Instead of treating model disturbances as random variables with known probability distributions, it is only assumed that they belong to some pre-specified compact set. Such an approach is appropriate when the decision maker does not have …Read More

Bertola, Giuseppe, (2016), “Finance, Labour, Capital, and International Integration”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, March Labour incomes depend on structural as well as politico-economic factors, because labour market policies partially remedy the financial market imperfections that make labour income shocks difficult to insure, and have different implications for labour and capital income. This paper illustrates such theoretical insights with a simple model, and reviews evidence of their empirical relevance generated by …Read More

Bordon, Anna Rose, Ebeke, Christian, Shirono, Kazuko, (2016), “When Do Structural Reforms Work? On the Role of the Business Cycle and Macroeconomic Policies”, IMF Working Paper, No. 16/62, 15 March Structural reforms are expected to lift growth and employment, but their effects are surprisingly difficult to pin down empirically. One reason is their potential endogeneity to the economic environment in which they are conducted. For example, the impact of a reform implemented shortly before …Read More

Heidenreich, Martin, (2015), “The end of the honeymoon: The increasing differentiation of (long-term) unemployment risks in Europe”, Journal of European Social Policy, Issue 4, Volume 25, pp. 393-413, October This article discusses the changing social distribution of unemployment and long-term unemployment risks during the current financial and economic crisis. These risks are interpreted as the result of three different, overlapping forms of labour market segmentation: first, the institutionally stabilized polarization between …Read More