Von der Staatsverschuldung zum Staatsbankrott?

The increase of sovereign debt and the crisis in the Eurozone led to a public discussion about the possibility and the causes of a sovereign default. This paper shows by looking at the development in the Eurozone that for a government defaulting on its debt the amount of sovereign debt is not crucial; the essential question is whether a government is able to borrow in its own currency and — if that is not the case — the amount of international debt of the whole country. This leads to important conclusions for European economic policy.     

欧洲主权债务危机及其对中欧贸易的影响研究

随着希腊主权债务危机的爆发,整个欧元区乃至全球又一次地笼罩在经济危机的阴影下。由于欧元体制等问题,使得希腊的债务危机逐渐演变成为欧元区债务危机,其对全球金融市场和主要经济体都产生了重大的影响。本文首先阐述欧债危机产生的背景和原因,进而分析欧债危机对中欧贸易的主要影响,并提出相应的对策建议。     

Trade openness,foreign direct investment,and finance-growth nexus in the Eurozone countries

The paper investigates causal relationships between trade openness, foreign direct investment, financial development, and economic growth in 19 Eurozone countries over the period 1988–2013. Using a panel vector error-correction model (VECM), the empirical results show that these variables are cointegrated. The study shows that a combination of opening the Eurozone countries for trade and fostering their financial and economic development have elevated inflows of foreign direct investment into the region in the long run. At the same time, increasing inflows of foreign direct investment in the short run have propelled economic growth, which in return has strengthened the role of financial development and international trade to sustain economic growth in the region through feedback effects. The empirical results have important policy implications for countries in the Eurozone, especially those who face challenges as a result of lack of confidence in their financial system and those who face a sovereign debt crisis.     

Finanzielle Repression — ein Instrument zur Bewältigung der Krisenfolgen?

Financial repression committed by central banks has been put forward as a means to secretly reduce the real burden of high public debts. Financial repression has allegedly played an important role in the impressive reduction of the US debt ratio after World War II. A mix of conventional budget consolidation and rapid growth was the main driver in this relative debt reduction with a minor role for financial repression. But does financial repression really exist? The authors express different opinions on evidence for this concept. Those authors who find that there are indicators of financial repression fear redistributive tendencies between debtors and creditors and high opportunity costs in the form of savings and investment distortions. Therefore, financial repression is not a “cure” for the high public debts amassed in the euro area during the recent sovereign debt and banking crisis. Furthermore, the high sovereign debts in the euro area may threaten economic development and impose high costs on society. Therefore, reducing these debts is politically highly relevant, and fiscal policy should be characterised by a modest reduction in government spending and/or tax increases, combined with a policy promoting economic growth. Macroprudential regulations should supplement this financial policy.     

Crisis costs and debtor discipline: the efficacy of public policy in sovereign debt crises

Recent debate on the reform of the international financial architecture has highlighted the potentially important role of the official sector in crisis management. We examine how such public intervention in sovereign debt crises affects efficiency, ex ante and ex post. Our results shed light on the scale of capital inflows and the implications for debtor country output of such a regime. The efficacy of measures such as officially sanctioned stays on creditor litigation depend critically on the quality of public sector surveillance and the size of the costs of sovereign debt crises.     

What can sector accounts tell about the financial crisis?

The current sovereign debt crisis is widely believed to have been caused by insufficient budget discipline. However, the financial sector accounts reveal that public as well as private borrowing in the euro area was dwarfed by the synchronised explosion of assets and liabilities of financial corporations. The paper suggests that the current concentration on a speedy cutback of public debt is premature at best. Policy should pay more attention to the main causes of the crisis: the excesses of the financial sector and the flaws in the design of the heterogeneous currency union.     

External Public Debt,Trade Linkages and Contagion During the Eurozone Crisis

Against the backdrop of the contagion literature, the paper analyses the impact of financial and trade linkages on sovereign bond spreads in the Eurozone crisis. Using quarterly data for a sample of EMU countries during the period 2000–13, we estimate fixed‐effect panel models with Driscoll and Kraay standard errors that are robust to general forms of spatial and temporal dependence. Our main results can be summarised as follows: first, we suggest that the ‘sudden stop’ of capital inflow towards the peripheral sovereign debt triggered a re‐segmentation of financial markets and economic systems along national borders, with negative implications for risk‐sharing and the efficient allocation of capital. The ‘home bias’ effect – that is the increase in the share of sovereign debt held by domestic banks – worsened the country‐specific risk because the twin crisis (sovereign and banking) began to be conceived as more closely intertwined within countries than before. Second, the structure of international trade helps to account for the geographic scope of contagion, even after controlling for macroeconomic and fiscal vulnerabilities. Finally, the ‘substitution effect’ of public debt securities of stand‐alone emerging countries has affected more the sovereign spreads in the core than in the periphery.     

欧债危机对我国对欧出口贸易的影响与因应措施

欧盟是中国最大的贸易伙伴。随着欧债危机逐渐从欧元区外围国家向核心国家蔓延,欧债危机引起的整个欧洲经济增长乏力、欧元贬值等问题势必会使中国对欧出口贸易受到影响。随着欧债危机的深化,相关成员国势必实施严格的紧缩政策,从而将使中国对欧出口遭遇更严峻的形势。鉴于欧元区在中国外贸出口中的重要地位,我们必须尽早设定应对措施,以期减缓欧债危机可能对我国经济造成的冲击。     

Nationale Geldsch?pfung zersetzt den Euroraum

The Eurosystem has been operating in crisis mode for more than four years now. Massive quantitative and qualitative easing in its monetary policy stance are the visible marks of its response to the turbulence in the financial sector. This policy aims primarily at maintaining financial stability in the euro area by providing vast liquidity support to commercial banks that are operating in nationally segmented banking systems. The sovereign debt crises in some member countries further exacerbate the segmentation problem along country borders. As a side effect, cross-border capital flows are substituted by money market operations by the national central banks. The latter are engaging more and more often in substantial balance-of-payments financing, and financial risks are shifted from investors to European taxpayers via the Eurosystem. Symptomatically, this shows up in exploding TARGET2 positions in the national central banks’ balance sheets. The longer this process continues, the stronger the centrifugal forces become that ultimately might burst the single currency. A solution requires a euro area-wide regulatory approach for the financial sector. Next to a uniform scheme for banking regulation, supervision and resolution, we recommend the comprehensive introduction of contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) as a major refinancing source for the banking industry. As this proposal cannot be introduced overnight, national and European banking resolution funds are necessary in the short run. The latter do not rescue banks, but they kick in as soon as a bank’s equity is depleted in order to wind down failing banks in a systemically prudent way.     

Firm Shutdown During the Financial and the Sovereign Debt Crises: Empirical Evidence from Portugal

This paper examines Portuguese firms’ survival over the business cycle and investigates whether the effect of firm size varies across the phases of the cycle and with the type of shock associated with periods of economic contraction. Our results show that smaller firms are more likely to shut down than larger firms. Within each size band, however, we found that during the two crises examined, micro firms experienced hazards of closing (relative to large firms) at least similar to those observed in the pre-crisis period, while medium-sized firms were found to have been more vulnerable during the financial crisis period but showed more resilience during the sovereign debt crisis. The results suggest that during the sovereign debt crisis, firms faced a higher probability of closing than they did during the financial crisis.     

Driven by the markets? ECB sovereign bond purchases and the securities markets programme

At the height of the European sovereign debt crisis, the European Central Bank decided to purchase distressed European government bonds. Even worse, and more importantly, the ECB is providing direct support of several hundred billions of euros to troubled banks via its normal monetary policy operations by granting them the opportunity to refinance at an interest rate of 1%. This article argues that these purchases will result in common monetary policy being dominated by national fiscal policies. The most worrisome aspect is that the euro area appears to have stumbled into unconventional monetary policies that, once started, will be difficult to exit. In the euro area, properly functioning financial markets are at risk.     

Governance of the Euro Area: Fiscal Union,Debt Union,Fiscal Freedom

Over the past three years, as the euro area has struggled with high levels of sovereign debt, it has been gradually developing into a debt union. However, this is not a sustainable arrangement. This article proposes two alternatives to a debt union — a fiscal union and a monetary union with fiscal freedom — and evaluates the pros and cons of each approach.     

Sovereign debt crises and credit to the private sector

We use micro-level data to analyze emerging markets' private sector access to international debt markets during sovereign debt crises. We find that these crises are systematically accompanied by a decline in foreign credit to domestic private firms, both during debt renegotiations and for over two years after restructuring agreements are reached. This decline is large, statistically significant, and robust. We find that this effect is concentrated in the non-financial sector and is different for firms in the exporting and in the non-exporting sectors. We also find that the magnitude of the effect depends on the type of debt restructuring agreement.     

An Interest Stabilisation Mechanism to Unburden the ECB

Intereconomics - Following the twin crises of sovereign debt and COVID-19, the ECB risks being stuck in a situation of fiscal dominance, in which monetary policy is subordinated to the needs of...     

欧洲主权债务危机及其影响

2010年2月初以来,随着美国次贷危机对各国经济的影响逐步消退、世界经济复苏越来越明显,欧洲主权债务危机开始进入人们的视野,国际金融市场出现震荡。欧洲主权债务危机对我国的影响主要是间接性的汇率风险,即我国巨额外汇储备中欧元部分的趋势性贬值风险。但是,我国应未雨绸缪,提早做好准备,主动积极应对欧洲主权债务危机。     

Niedrige Zinsen — gesamtwirtschaftliche Ursachen und Folgen

Due to the financial crises from 2008 to 2012, unconventional monetary policy caused an environment of record low interest rates around the world. Maintaining the low interest rate policy might be reasonable for the ECB in the short run in order to fight the fragmentation of the financial market and the risk of defl ation in the Eurozone. Some authors argue that permanently low interest rates lead to wrong incentives in the financial market for debtors and creditors alike. They fear potential risks for fiscal policy and financial stability in Germany and recommend macroprudential measures beyond the Basel III framework and a beginning exit of the ECB from its unconventional monetary policy. Others warn against overburdening monetary policy. They find rather that effective financial market regulation and proper fiscal rules and institutions are required to secure financial market stability and the sustainability of public debt and that a premature exit from accommodating monetary policies would do more harm than good. They argue that monetary policy alone will not solve Europe’s problems. The differing recommendations are mainly based on differing assessments of the European business cycle.     

Banking union with a sovereign virus

Despite the experience of the ongoing sovereign debt crisis, European banks continue to hold large amounts of bonds from their home governments. This ties the fates of the sovereign and the banks together, leading to the disruptive self-reinforcing feedback loops that brought the euro area to the brink of collapse. This article addresses how banks can be weaned off of their massive investments in their home government’s bonds.     

The arrival of the Euro and its implications for Asia

The third stage of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) commenced on January 1, 1999 with the launch of the European single currency, the euro. The first round of participants comprises 11 of the 15 European Union (EU) nations, dubbed “Euroland.” The potential implications of EMU for Asia are immense. The euro's emergence as an international currency and its impact on Asia can be assessed in 3 different domains: (1) as a medium of exchange for Europe's trade with Asia; (2) as a store of value in stocks and bonds in world capital markets; and (3) as part of official foreign exchange reserves of Asian central banks. Our analysis suggests that there is potential for the euro to play a bigger role in EU-Asia trade links, which will be underpinned by the collective importance of Euroland as a much-enlarged trading and investment partner for Asia. However, in the short term at least, Asian equity markets are unlikely to benefit from significant inflows of capital from the EU as the former have been decimated by the region's financial crisis. As for Asian bond markets, rapid deterioration of sovereign ratings of countries in the region over the past 12 months would make it difficult for Asian companies to raise funds through euro-denominated debt instruments. As for official foreign exchange reserves, the bulk of Asian reserves is currently held in US dollar assets. Judging from Asian trade and debt figures, it seems unlikely that the euro would challenge the US dollar as a reserve currency any time in the near future. Nevertheless, in the longer term, the euro's introduction could make it easier for Asian central banks to diversify their reserves from the greenback to the euro. The internationalization of the euro is likely to happen only gradually, whether in terms of international trade denomination and settlement, denominating international financial assets, or as a reserve currency. Since the magnitude of shock that the single European currency would bring to the international monetary system is still unknown, only very tentative conclusions for the impact on Asian countries can be drawn at this point in time.     

Decoupling and Contagion: The Special Case of the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper demonstrates that the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis constitutes a special case in the contagion literature with general implications. Perfectly correlated bond markets imply that contagion can only occur if there is a decoupling to lower correlation levels with increased idiosyncratic shocks leading to more severe but less systemic spillovers. This theoretical prediction is fully supported by the empirical analysis. We also show that dynamic coexceedance estimates provide a more robust and more general picture of contagion than correlation‐based tests. Coexceedances identify only one major incidence of contagion that affected five periphery Eurozone countries in May 2010 and coincided with flight to quality from the periphery to the core and the 2010 “flash crash” in US equity markets.     

欧元区主权债务危机分析

欧元区主权债务危机的爆发缘于欧元区分散的财政政策与统一的货币政策之间的二元矛盾;欧元区国家不可持续的社会经济结构模式;全球金融危机的冲击。欧元区主权债务危机从债权安全、国际贸易、汇率改革、人民币国际化等方面给我国带来挑战和机遇。欧洲主权债务危机对我国的总体影响是有限的,我国在近期也不可能出现主权债务危机,可以从欧元区主权债务危机中得到启示:加快经济结构优化调整;规范地方政府融资行为;谨慎开展区域货币一体化合作。