This paper explores the impact of country size on labor market flexibility in a monetary union with a common monetary policy as conducted in EMU. I apply a Barro-Gordon framework and test its result empirically for EMU. Results confirm that small countries demand higher labor market flexibility...

In a monetary union, fiscal transfers are an important policy tool to adjust to asymmetric shocks. However, fiscal transfers cannot substitute structural reforms especially when shocks are permanent. In this way, the design of fiscal transfer systems determine whether structural reforms or...

This paper analyses the implications of a continued divergence of TARGET2 balances for monetary policy in the euro area. The accumulation of TARGET2 claims (liabilities) would make ECB’s liquidity management asymmetric once the TARGET2 claims in core countries have crowded out central bank...

Credit booms have globally fuelled hikes in stock, raw material and real estate markets which have culminated in the recent US subprime market crisis. We explain the global asset market booms since the mid 1980s based on the overinvestment theories of Hayek, Wicksell and Schumpeter. We argue...

The paper analyses the monetary policy operations of central banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We distinguish the pattern of monetary policy operations of the liquidity providing central banks of the large industrialized countries (creditor central banks) and the liquidity...

We show how since the mid 1980s expansionary monetary policies in the large economies and “vagabonding liquidity” have contributed to bubbles in the new and emerging markets. Based on the monetary overinvestment theories of Hayek and Wicksell we describe a wave of bubbles and crises that was...

The business cycles theories of Wicksell (1898), Schumpeter (1912), Mises (1912), Hayek (1929, 1935) and Minsky (1986, 1992) explain business cycles by distorted prices on capital markets, buoyant credit expansion and overinvestment. The exuberance during the boom endogenously causes the...