Many governments introduced temporary adjustments to counter the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the importance of already existing government transfers and pandemic measures to mitigate individual income losses during the pandemic in Sweden using a...

Many observers consider the German 'debt brake' beyond criticism. In the current crisis, many European countries have difficulties refinancing their budgets, while the German treasury's funding conditions are most favourable. The 'fiscal compact's' call for the introduction of German-style 'debt...

Democracy is defined by two core tenets: voice and pluralism. Within these constraints, a wide variety of regime types can be designed. We show that the only new, untested form of democracy is when every citizen is governed by the political party of his/her choice. Multiple full-edged...

The global financial crisis of 2007-09 has led to an intensive research program analyzing a wide range of issues related to financial crises. This paper presents a summary of a forthcoming book, Financial Crises: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses, that includes 19 contributions...

The present study puts forward a plan for solving the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area (EA) in line with the interests of the working classes and the social majority. Our main strategy is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to acquire a significant part of the outstanding sovereign debt...

We describe and evaluate the measures taken by the U.S. government to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008. We begin by outlining the business model of these two firms and their role in the U.S. housing finance system. Our focus then turns to the sources of financial distress that...

This paper analyses the long-run effects of financialisation and of the recent financial and economic crises for 15 countries. In order to provide a theoretical framework, we first outline three types of regimes under the conditions of financialisation, namely a debtled private demand boom, an...

In the United States, 115 people die each day due to overdose, and a third of overdoses involve the concurrent use of opioids and a class of sedatives called benzodiazepines. Facing a similar problem in 2012, Austria responded by installing public health ocers (PHOs) as third-party institutions...

Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. It is thus important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit...

We provide an early assessment of the Juncker Commission's contributions to the ongoing reform of the euro area. In doing so, we present a chronological summary of the reform process up to 2014. At the time, the euro area architecture had undergone many changes. These were mainly focused on risk...