Evaluation of the financial costs of a Eurozone breakup depends critically on the interpretation of TARGET balances. While it has been argued that TARGET claims in the Eurozone can be written off without incurring any losses on the claimants as the value of fiat money is independent of the...

While the financial protection measures enacted by the ECB and the community of Eurozone members have calmed financial markets, they have left the competitiveness problem of the Eurozone's southern countries and France unresolved. The paper compares price inflation before the crisis with the...

As shown in Sinn and Wollmershäuser (2012a), during the European balance-of-payments crisis, inter-governmental credit and Target credit granted by core-country central banks have replaced private international capital flows in financing the crisis countries' current account deficits, and even...

During the Interparliamentary Committee Meeting, a debate took place on two key policy issues: the relationship between effectiveness and political legitimacy of the new framework for European Governance and the difficult cohabitation between austerity and growth. The need for a more active role...

Contrary to a frequent contention, systems competition cannot work when governments respect the Subsidiarity Principle. The principle implies that governments step in where markets fail. Reintroducing markets through the back door of systems competition will again result in market failure. Three...

The 1997 German tax reform, which is of the tax-cut-cum-base- broadening type, has favorable welfare effects for Germany as a player in the international tax competition game, but it does so in part for paradoxical reasons. The reform favors investment projects whose returns are taxed according...

It is not surprising that the U.S. has been by far the world's largest shock producer in this crisis. The big shock absorbers on the other hand were Japan, Russia and Germany, whose exports shrank more than their imports