Turkey recovered swiftly from the global financial crisis but sizeable macroeconomic imbalances arose in the process. High consumer price inflation and a wide current account deficit are sources of vulnerability. Even though below-potential growth helps rebalancing and disinflation, these...

Emerging economies have been subject to abrupt reversals in capital inflows, which have adverse consequences for economic activity and financial stability. An important question for policymakers is how to respond to a sudden loss of external financing and its negative effects on the domestic...

Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System diverging current account positions in Europe have prevailed. While the Southern and Western European countries have tended to run current account deficits, the current accounts of the Central and Northern European countries, in particular Germany,...

Countries which share a common currency potentially have strong incentives to share macroeconomic risks through a system of transfers to compensate for the loss of national monetary policy. However, the option to leave the currency union and regain national monetary policy can place severe...

It is frequently argued that credit rating agencies (CRAs) have acted procyclically in their rating of sovereign debt in the European Monetary Union (EMU). They are believed to have under-rated sovereign risk in the early years of EMU, when integrated financial markets provided easier access to...

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has recently received significant at- tention in academic and policy circles. Critics question the sustainability of MMT-prescribed approaches to fiscal and monetary policy, especially over extended periods of time, in the presence of international financial markets,...

Halving the US current account deficit as a share of GDP is likely to impose a burden of $2,350 per capita on the United States, which explains why US policymakers want to postpone adjustment. The rest of the world relies on the economic stimulus of a widening US external deficit, which explains...

In this paper we ask whether tighter monetary and fiscal policies are the right way to face a sudden stop (a sudden curtailment in capital flows) in a typical emerging economy. We develop exogenous measures of fiscal and monetary policy response and conclude that tighter policies are associated...

The paper scrutinizes the reasons for the European debt crisis, the implications for TARGET2 imbalances and options for surplus liquidity absorption within an asymmetric EMU. It is argued that starting from the turn of the millennium diverging fiscal policy paths and diverging unit labor costs...

We show that welfare can be lower under complete financial markets than under autarky in a monetary union with home bias, sticky prices and asymmetric shocks. Such a monetary union is a second-best environment in which the structure of financial markets affects risk-sharing but also shapes the...