In recent years, the global economy has been hit by a sequence of severe shocks that affected the two largest economies, the USA and the Euro Area, severely. Uncertainties about the future abound. While the challenges are similar for both economies and the policy tools resemble each other, they...

In this paper, the sustainability of public debt is interpreted as the result of the interaction of fiscal policy with the economic environment, and not as a statistical concept as in most of the recent literature. If debt must not explode over time, policy makers have to respond to the changing...

The notes in this compilation discuss the challenges for ECB monetary policy stemming from the recent appreciation of the Euro in the context of a nascent euro area recovery. The notes have been requested by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) as an input for the July 2014...