This paper analyzes whether differences in institutional structures on capital markets contribute to explaining why some OECD-countries, in particular the Anglo-Saxon countries, have been much more successful over the last two decades in producing employment growth and in reducing unemployment...

The recent extensive package introduced by the Commission is the most comprehensive reinforcement of economic governance in the EU and the euro area since the launch of the Economic and Monetary Union. Broader and enhanced surveillance of fiscal policies, but also macroeconomic policies and...

In the past decade, a set of euro area countries has accumulated large current account deficits. After a brief relaxation of the euro area internal imbalances in the wake of the financial crisis, it appears as if this pattern arises anew when times normalize again and Germany still sticks to...

We analyze the ECB Governing Council's voting procedures. The literature has by now discussed numerous aspects of the rotation model but does not account for many institutional aspects of the voting procedure of the GC. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension (MLE) of...

This paper examines the importance of different economic sentiments, e.g. consumer moods, for the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) during the transition process. We first analyze the importance of economic confidence with respect to the CEECs' financial markets. Since the...

In this paper we present an empirically stable euro area money demand model. Using a sample period until 2009:2 shows that the current financial and economic crisis that started in 2007 does not appear to have any noticeable impact on the stability of the euro area money demand function. We also...

We assess differences that emerge in Taylor rule estimations for the Fed and the ECB before and after the start of the subprime crisis. For this purpose, we apply an explicit estimate of the equilibrium real interest rate and of potential output in order to account for variations within these...

This paper examines the interactions between money, interest rates, goods and commodity prices at a global level. For this purpose, we aggregate data for major OECD countries and follow the Johansen/Juselius cointegrated VAR approach. Our empirical model supports the view that, when controlling...

Is secular stagnation—a period of persistently lower growth such as that seen following the financial crisis of 2008-09—a valid concern for euro-area countries? We tackle this question using the well-established Laubach-Williams model to estimate the unobservable equilibrium real interest...

Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both...