Bølstad, Jørgen, Elhardt, Christoph, (2015), “To bail out or not to bail out? Crisis politics, credibility, and default risk in the Eurozone”, European Union Politics, Issue 16, Volume 3, September We examine the impact of signals regarding the Eurozone’s bail-out commitment on government bond spreads in the Eurozone’s periphery, analysing the effect of positive, negative and mixed statements and decisions by the EU, the ECB and Germany. We construct a dataset of relevant …Read More

Banerji, Angana, Barkbu, Bergljot, John, James, Kinda, Tidiane, Saksonovs, Sergejs, Schoelermann, Hanni, Wu, Tao, (2015), “Building a Better Union : Incentivizing Structural Reforms in the Euro Area”, IMF publications-Working Papers, 11 September The momentum for structural reforms is waning in the euro area at a time when even faster progress is needed to boost productivity and growth, achieve real economic convergence, and improve the resilience of the monetary union. What can the European Union (EU) institutions do to bridge this divide? This paper …Read More

Gross, Marco, Poblacion, Javier, (2015), “A false sense of security in applying handpicked equations for stress test purposes”, ECB Working Paper Series, No. 1845, September The purpose of this paper is to promote the use of Bayesian model averaging for the design of satellite models that financial institutions employ for stress testing. Banks employing ’handpicked’ equations – while meeting standard economic and econometric soundness criteria – risk significantly underestimating the …Read More

IMF, (2015), “Monetary Policies in Advanced Economies: Good for Them, Good for Others”, IMF Policy Paper, 23 June 2015. Accommodative monetary policies in systemic advanced economies can have a positive impact on economic activity in other countries if they are perceived as good news about growth prospects in advanced economies, said a new IMF report that assesses the “spillover” impact of policies on other economies. Seven years after the onset of …Read More

Astarita, Caterina, (2015), “Taxing Wealth: Past, Present, Future”, European Economy Discussion Paper, N. 003, July. In times of fiscal consolidation and strong macroeconomic adjustment needs in some EU Member States, the debate on wealth taxation gained momentum, both in the academic and in the policy debate. In this context, the aim of the workshop, held by DG ECFIN on 13 November 2014, was to discuss theoretical and policy issues associated with wealth taxation, including the …Read More

Stehrer, Robert, Nagengast, Arne, (2015), “The great collapse in value added trade”, ECB Working Paper Series, No 1833 / July 2015 This paper studies the great collapse in value added trade using a structural decomposition analysis. We show that changes in vertical specialisation accounted for almost half of the great trade collapse, while the previous literature on gross trade has mainly focused on final expenditure, in-ventory adjustment and adverse credit supply conditions. The decline in …Read More

Jimeno, Juan, (2015), “Long-lasting consequences of the European crisis”, ECB Working Paper Series, No 1832 / July 2015 The Great Recession and the subsequent European crisis may have long-lasting effects on aggregate demand, aggregate supply, and, hence, on macroeconomic performance over the medium and long-run. Besides the fact that financial crisis last longer and are succeeded by slower recoveries, and apart from the hysteresis effects that may operate after episodes of long-term unemployment, the combination of high …Read More