We investigate the role and impact of household debt on the economic performance of European economies during the double-dip recession of 2008–2013. We use a loan-level data set of millions of residential mortgages originated between 2000 and 2013 to calculate regional indicators of household debt. The granular information allows us to construct a measure of interest rate mispricing during the housing boom that we use to identify the effect of a credit shock (CS) on household debt. Our analysis provides three main conclusions. First, in the period 2004–2006, the measure of CS was negative in most European regions which indicates that credit conditions were significantly relaxed relative to earlier years. Second, we find that regions in which household leverage increased more rapidly during the 2002–2007 period experienced a more severe decline in output and employment after 2008. Third, we find that the CS had the largest effect on increasing leverage for the low-income and the middle-income households, although the leverage of the high-income households represents a more powerful predictor of the decline in economic activity.

We build a two-country New-Keynesian DSGE model of a Currency Union to study the effects of fiscal policy coordination, by evaluating the stabilization properties and welfare implications of different fiscal policy scenarios. Our main findings are that a government spending rule which targets the net exports gap rather than the domestic output gap produces more stable dynamics and that consolidating government budget constraints across countries with symmetric tax rate movements provides greater stabilization. A key role is played by the trade elasticity which determines the impact of the terms of trade on net exports. In fact, when goods are complements, the stabilization properties of coordinating fiscal policies are no longer supported. These findings point out to possible policy prescriptions for the Euro Area: to coordinate fiscal policies by reducing international demand imbalances, either by stabilizing trade flows across countries or by creating some form of Fiscal Union or both.

The European sovereign debt crisis has revived the debate about appropriate fiscal rules in the European Economic and Monetary Union. Whereas the Stability and Growth Pact and the Fiscal Compact make no distinction between public consumption and investment expenditure, the aim of the current paper is to analyze the implications of the adoption of the Golden rule in a monetary union, distinguishing between the two types of public expenditure. With the help of a macroeconomic model, we show that introducing a Golden rule and smoothing public investment expenditure would be welfare-improving, and mostly for countries where taxation rates and the productivity of public investment are highest, and for the most closed countries. It would also be the most beneficial for countries where the monetary transmission parameter, the propensity to consume, and the price elasticity of supply are weakest, whereas supply-side distortions are the strongest.

This paper analyzes government spending multipliers in a two-country model of a monetary union with price stickiness and home bias in consumption where monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. Government spending multipliers under this constraint are computed and compared with fiscal multipliers in normal times, that is, where the central bank sets the nominal interest rate via a Taylor rule. The trade elasticity and the parameter measuring home bias in consumption play an important role in determining the size of the multiplier. The multipliers are not necessarily large under the ZLB constraint. However, compared with the fiscal multipliers when the central bank sets the nominal interest rate according to a Taylor rule, the multipliers under the ZLB are bigger. Moreover, the persistence parameter of the binding ZLB plays a crucial role.

This paper considers which currency option would be best for an independent Scotland. We examine three currency options: being part of a sterling currency zone, adopting the euro, or having an independent currency. No currency option is the best when considered against all criteria. Therefore, making the decision requires deciding which criteria are most important. Recent events around the world, particularly in Europe, show that it is essential to consider how an independent Scotland would seek to adjust to adverse economic circumstances. In economists' terms, it is important to think through the ‘off-equilibrium’ adjustment paths of each of the currency options. The amount of public debt, and so the capacity for a fiscal response, is a critical determinant of these paths and therefore of the optimal currency choice. Since commitment to a currency union by an independent country can only be conditional, an independent Scotland might find it optimal to abandon the currency union in the future if the financial stability advantages to having its own currency begin to outweigh any disadvantages due to trade and transactions costs.

We argue that a fixed exchange rate can be an optimal choice even if a policy maker could commit to the first-best monetary policy whenever the private sector's beliefs reflect incomplete information about the policy maker's dependability. This model implies that joining a currency area may be optimal for its impact not on the behavior of the policy maker, but on the beliefs of the private sector. Monetary policies are evaluated using a new Keynesian model of a small open economy solved under imperfect policy credibility. We quantify the minimum distance between announced policy and the private sector's beliefs that is necessary for a peg to perform better than an independent monetary policy when the policy maker can commit to the first-best policy.

This paper evaluates the welfare gains arising from deeper trade integration in the European Monetary Union. To do this, the European Monetary Union is represented in a realistic way by an intertemporal general equilibrium model with incomplete financial markets, sticky prices, and home bias in production. The model is estimated and not rejected by the data. Two main results emerge: (i) an increase in vertical trade (occuring at the early stage of the production process) implies welfare gains whereas (ii) an increase in horizontal trade (occuring at the late stage of the production process) implies welfare losses.

Using a two–country DGSE combining nominal rigidities and financial frictions, we show that the persistence of output and inflation asymmetries observed since 1999 in an increasingly integrated EMU is not necessarily puzzling. Only the integration of intermediate goods markets unambiguously leads to a reduction of asymmetries while the integration of finals goods markets and the integration of financial markets increase the dispersion of inflation rates and business cycles. The result builds on the intensive use of financial markets, i.e. the current account, to adjust externally and smooth the consequences of asymmetric shocks. This mechanism implies a disconnection of country-level outputs and/or inflation rates to ensure that agents return to their initial asset position in the long run.

The successes of the first decade of European Economic and Monetary Union are impressive, but it is fair to stress these were achieved in a relatively benign economic environment characterised by steady global growth, supportive financial conditions and fiscal windfalls associated with booms in asset markets. Although all this has come to an abrupt end with the financial crisis, there is a silver lining of fiscal stimulus being more effective in EMU than without the single currency, with offsetting exchange rate responses absent, trade multipliers stronger and the fiscal framework credible. But the financial crisis also clearly demonstrated the need for stronger coordination of national policy actions to internalise cross-border spillovers. Meanwhile, the European Commission has a major role to play in striking the right balance between short-term emergency measures and longer-term priorities. Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on the longer-run challenges and the policy agenda for meeting them.

In this paper we propose a simple, automatic insurance mechanism designed to cope with asymmetric shocks in a monetary union, which could be used as starting point of a more elaborated policy instrument. The mechanism would use as indicator of the occurrence of a shock the changes in the unemployment rate of the countries belonging to the union, and would be financed through a fund built from contributions of these countries as a percentage of their tax receipts. The fund would be distributed among the countries affected by a negative asymmetric shock according to the proportion in which every one of them would have been affected by the shock. Our proposal is illustrated by means of an empirical application to the case of EMU.

Dans un modèle à deux pays où on considère le policy-mix en réponse à des chocs, on examine la question de savoir si le gain résultant de la coordination des politiques budgétaires entre pays est plus élevé en union monétaire qu'en change flexible. On montre tout d'abord que l'asymétrie des chocs peut contribuer à rendre le gain d'une telle coordination plus élevé en union monétaire qu'en change flexible. On montre aussi que le poids accordé par la banque centrale à la stabilisation de l'inflation par rapport au produit agrégé s'avère aussi jouer un rôle. S'il est élevé, il peut contribuer à rendre ce gain plus élevé en union moné