All explorations of the future of the Euro show serious risks for its survival in the present form. The road map of the Five EU Presidents presented in 2015 is far from sufficient to reduce the risks of the Euro zone falling apart by Brexit type developments or new economic shocks. The EU...

In March 2024, the European Central Bank published the results of a review of its operational framework. After discussing how the ECB operational framework has changed since the Great Financial Crisis, we provide an assessment of the review, which we deem as premature, and highlight some gaps it...

In a monetary union, fiscal transfers are an important policy tool to adjust to asymmetric shocks. However, fiscal transfers cannot substitute structural reforms especially when shocks are permanent. In this way, the design of fiscal transfer systems determine whether structural reforms or...

This paper proposes an alternative stability and growth pact to the one which accompanied the introduction of the euro in January 1999. The latter is part of the third stage of economic and monetary union and, will govern the economic policies of the member countries which have joined the single...

This paper identifies and measures fiscal spillovers in the EU countries empirically using a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model. Our aim is to look at the sign and the absolute values of fiscal spillovers in a country-wise perspective and at the time profile (impulse response) of the...

Purpose – A spectre is hunting embryonic African monetary zones: the EMU crisis. This paper assesses real, monetary and fiscal policy convergence within the proposed WAM and EAM zones. The introduction of common currencies in West and East Africa is facing stiff challenges in the timing of...

We estimate spillover effects of a fiscal shock in one member country in the euro area on outputs of the rest of the members, using a Global Vector Autoregression (GVAR) model. We compare the effects of a domestic fiscal shock with those of a similar size area-wide shock expressed as a weighted...