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Working Paper
Monetary/Fiscal Interactions with Forty Budget Constraints
It is well known that monetary and fiscal policy are connected by a common budget constraint. In this paper, we study how this manifests itself in the context of the Eurozone, where that connection links the European Central Bank, the 19 national central banks, the Treasuries of 19 countries, and the European Union. Our goal is twofold. First, we wish to clarify how seigniorage flows from the monetary authority to the budget of each country. Second, we seek to answer the question of how the taxpayers of each country are affected by a default of one of the participants to the union. In ...
Discussion Paper
Capital Flight inside the Euro Area: Cooling Off a Fire Sale
Countries in the euro area periphery such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain saw large-scale capital flight in 2011 and the first half of 2012. While events unfolded much like a balance of payments crisis, the contraction in domestic credit was less severe than would ordinarily be caused by capital flight of this scale. Why was that? An important reason is that much of the capital flight was financed by credits to deficit countries? central banks, with those credits extended collectively by other central banks in the euro area. This balance of payments financing was paired with policies to ...
Journal Article
The balance of payments crisis in the euro area periphery
Countries in the euro area periphery borrowed heavily from abroad in the years leading up to the sovereign debt crisis, largely to finance increased consumption and housing investment. When the crisis hit in 2010, capital flight by private investors forced these countries to bring domestic spending back into line with domestic incomes?the same adjustment required of countries facing a typical balance of payments crisis. Nevertheless, adjustment to the pullback of private capital was not as harsh as might have been expected, owing to the workings of the euro area?s system for managing ...