Compared to the U.S., the euro area has been underperforming in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). This … holds especially true for peripheral euro area economies. Whereas the U.S. is characterised by a financial system dominated … by arms’ length (capital-market oriented) interaction between providers and users of funds, in Europe, in many cases …

largely around the rather simplistic and binary comparison between bank-based versus market-based financial systems. The Great …

. Another challenge for the next decade is for some of the member countries of the euro area to adjust to the loss of the … cannot be answered if the euro area falls apart because its member countries cannot adjust to the constraints of a stable … brief review of forces that might threaten the euro area. The second section then details some crucial facets of the …