We explore the interaction between labour market reforms and financial frictions. Our study combines a new cross-country reform database on labour market reforms with matched firm-bank data for nine euro area countries over the period 1999 to 2013. While we find that labour market reforms are...

This book considers the issue of exchange rate policymaking from a political economy perspective. It illustrates both theoretically and empirically how domestic political and institutional incentives shape exchange rate policies in developing countries. Empirical analysis is based on a panel...

The euro area sovereign debt crisis has highlighted the importance of reducing public debt levels and building up sufficient fiscal buffers during normal and good times. It has also reaffirmed the need for a thorough debt sustainability analysis (DSA) to act as a warning system for national...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of government bond yield spreads in the euro area with a focus on developments during the global financial crisis that started in 2007. In line with the previous literature, we find that international factors, in particular general...

This paper examines the relation between money and housing variables in the euro area and in the US. Our empirical model is based on a standard money demand relation which is augmented by housing market variables. In doing so, co-integrated money demand relationships can be established for both...

This paper empirically investigates the differences in the motives of raising privatisation proceeds for a panel of EU countries from 1990 to 2000. More specifically, we test whether privatisations can be mainly interpreted (a) as ingredients of a larger reform package of economic liberalisation...

According to the traditional "optimum currency area" approach, not much will be lost from a very hard peg to a currency union if there has been little reason for variations in the exchange rate. This paper takes a different approach and highlights the fact that high exchange rate volatility may...