We analyze the feedback mechanisms between economic downturns and financial stress for several euro area countries. Our study employs newly constructed financial condition indices that incorporate banking variables extensively. We apply a non-linear Vector Smooth Transition Autoregressive...

The paper considers the transition of an economy from non-renewable to renewable energy. The Hotelling theorem suggests to extract a non-renewable resource in an optimal way such that the resource tends to be depleted when optimally extracted. Yet,it might not be reasonable to deplete...

Using parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques, we analyze the sustainability of the recently growing current account imbalances in the Euro Area and test whether the introduction of the European Monetary Union has aggravated these imbalances. For these purposes two alternative...

We review the major provisions of Dodd-Frank, focusing on the monitoring of systemic risk, the limitation on proprietary trading, the regulation of the hedge fund industry, credit rating agencies, and the rules applicable to derivative trading. We compare these provisions with the recent...

The causes of the present crisis are largely to be found in the unregulated development of new financial products and in the over-expansion of the financial sector, in particular the shadow banking sector, which emerged precisely to avoid regulation. These changes led to lower risk perception,...

Germany will be one of the core countries in the European Monetary Union (EMU). Currently there is therefore a great interest in issues of labor market and monetary policy in Germany. On the basis of a macroeconometric model we study the interaction of labor market and alternative monetary...

In the framework of a Keynesian based monetary macromodel we study the implications of alternative monetary policy rules. Our monetary macromodel exhibits the following features: asset market clearing, disequilibrium in the product and labor markets, sluggish price and quantity adjustments, two...

With the recent events of the large-scale financial crisis in some parts of the world and the slowly declining inflation rate in major OECD countries debt deflation has again become an important topic in economic research. In a model with debt issuing firms, financing their investment, we...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The micro evidence suggests modest effects of changes in generosity, but there are reasons to doubt that the impacts on national unemployment rates are consequential. The authors...