In 2011, Portugal was subjected to one of the most stringent austerity packages implemented during the Eurozone crisis, a package known as the troika program. The interpretation of the effects of this program led to a vivid confrontation between two opposing views. A Keynesian view stressed the...

This chapter explores an institutional challenge still facing the European Monetary Union (EMU) after the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. One of these is the absence of a centralized macroeconomic stabilization function to deal with possible asymmetrical shocks, in addition to the common...