3 DIW Economic Bulletin 1.2013 With the crisis in the euro area, the issue of the institutional structure of the monetary union has gained in significance. One problem with regard to the longer-term stability of the euro area is the absence of mechanisms to adequately absorb asymmetric cyclical shocks in the individual member states. Such an instrument is essential in order to be able to implem...

Structural reforms that reduce product and labor market markups in peripheral Europe by 10 percentage points can improve competitiveness in that region and boost unionwide output by almost 5%. If implemented during a crisis that takes the nominal interest rate to its lower bound, however, these reforms have short-run contractionary effects of more than 1% on impact, thus deepening the recession...

T he explosive growth of the college athletics " business " has dramatically altered these amateur games over the past decade. The multimillion dollar university sports enterprises often dwarf academic departments in terms of resources. Athletic departments are commanding more and more attention of college presidents and governing boards, and rightfully so! While many of the perennial top compe...

The motivation of our paper comes from David Gale’s seminal work in 1974. He constructed an example of the ‘‘transfer paradox’’ based on three Leontief functions. The transfer paradox is that when there is a set of agents in the home country and that the home country is trading with other countries, then certain public lump-sum tax transfer plans could make all agents in the home country better...

The fiscal condition of most OECD countries has deteriorated markedly in the last 30 years. But beyond this general weakening, there has been considerable variation in the fiscal performance of these countries. For example, Italy, Belgium, Japan and Ireland accumulated significant amounts of public debt whereas Finland, Norway, the UK and, until recently, Germany, implemented relatively conserv...

Using a flexible semiparametric varying coefficient model specification, this paper examines the role of fiscal policy on the U.S. asset markets (stocks, corporate and treasury bonds). We consider two possible roles of fiscal deficits (or surpluses): as a separate direct information variable and as a (indirect) conditioning information variable indicating binding constraints on monetary policy ...

This paper investigates the effects of fiscal policy on the trade balance using a structural factor model. A fiscal policy shock worsens the trade balance and produces an appreciation of the domestic currency but the effects are quantitatively small. The findings match the theoretical predictions of the standard Mundell-Fleming model, although fiscal policy should not be considered one of the m...

the aim of this research is to analyse of empirical relationship of fiscal policy and iranian trade account in the years 1338-1385(1959-2006). in and econometrics model the methods of engle and granger (1987), johansen (1988), ardl, pessaran and shin(1998), philips and hansen(1990), have been used to find out the effects of variables such as government expenditures(the component of public deman...

The economic literature provides useful insights into the nature and causes of the current crisis. I am thinking in particular of the literature highlighting the fragility of equilibria and the possibility of self-fulfilling prophecies. A literature that includes the seminal work of Diamond and Dybvig (1983) on bank runs, which has inspired a large number of papers dealing with financial crises...