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Cross-border bank flows, which had surged in the run-up to the global financial crisis (GFC), shrank significantly after the GFC. According to our findings, this development did not point to financial deglobalization, as was widely expected. Instead, it reflected a cross-border deleveraging of (core) European banks seeking to restore their capital positions. The GFC triggered regulatory reforms that were remarkable, especially with regard to the banking system. Nevertheless, the opportunity to fundamentally overhaul the regulatory regime in general and the global monetary order in particular was not seized. While regulatory reform has progressed incrementally during the last decade, the partial retreat of the USA from multilateralism has brought this issue back onto the table.

The enlargement of the European Union raises a series of questions related to new member states' entry to the EU's exchange rate mechanism II (ERM II) and their subsequent adoption of the euro. This paper considers how to determine the best initial central parity for new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe toward entering ERM II. This is followed by a discussion of the asymmetric nature of the fluctuation bands around a central parity that could be deemed as compatible with the Maastricht criterion on exchange rate stability, i.e., within the officially announced ±15 percent fluctuation margins, at about +2.25 percent on the weaker side, with significantly more scope for appreciation on the stronger side. Thereby, the practices of the European Monetary Institute/European Central Bank and the European Commission are compared when assessing the Maastricht criterion. With this as a background, a hypothetical ERM II is constructed for four new EU member states with flexible exchange rate regimes, namely, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, to assess, ex post, the hypothetical fulfillment of the Maastricht criterion by these countries. Based on such an examination, fulfilling the criterion may prove a tricky task, which, inter alia, suggests the need for the careful selection of an appropriate initial ERM II central rate.

This policy note presents an assessment of the EU budgetary package for 2021-2027, including the European Union Recovery Instrument ‘Next Generation EU’ (EURI-NGEU), with an introduction to the EU decision-making process and the state of play of the relevant legislation as well as an annexed overview of (a) revenue-side decisions, (b) the size, composition and allocation of expenditures and (c) the new rule-of-law regulation. Major achievements are complementary common EU borrowing for EURI-NGEU programmes and the increased focus on climate. However, the EU budget remains tiny, and a national fiscal and (common) monetary policy is needed for stabilisation. EURI-NGEU grants, which are particularly relevant for member states with below-average per-capita income, primarily target public investment in structural change aimed at climate-related and digitisation projects, but they may also help to finance COVID-induced national fiscal deficits, albeit only to a small extent. Governance will be the main challenge facing the implementation of these projects. Compared with the Commission’s proposal, the European Council cut funding for EU-wide strategic investments and for external action (neighbourhood, development, humanitarian aid), and, thus, the funds for external action even decline relative to 2014-2020 (EU27) in the midst of a global pandemic. Cuts to the proposed climate-specific Just Transition Fund undermine the 30% climate spending target, which also hinges on how direct agricultural payments are classified. Progress on the revenue side with the new plastic packaging waste-based national contribution and the roadmap to further new own resources contrasts with the expanded privilege of rebate on the GNI-based contribution for a few member states.

This paper reviews price dynamics in the Central and Eastern European accession countries between 1990 and 2001. The paper starts with an analysis of the short-term and long-term (dis)inflation developments. This is complemented by an appraisal of price level convergence. The major driving forces of price formation in the accession countries are found to be related to price liberalization during the transition to a market economy, to the prospective EU accession, and to the catching-up process (Balassa-Samuelson effect). Finally, the paper draws conclusions about future monetary and exchange rate policy options in the run-up to EU accession and beyond.

This paper reviews the developments of prices in the Central and Eastern European EU accession countries between 1990 and 2001. The paper starts with an analysis of the short-term and long-term (dis)inflation dynamics. This is complemented by an appraisal of price level convergence. The major driving forces of price formation in the accession countries are found to be related to price liberalization during the transition to a market economy, to the prospective EU accession, and to the catching-up process (Balassa-Samuelson effect). Finally, the paper draws conclusions about future monetary and exchange rate policy options in the run-up to EU accession and beyond.

Climate change poses three specific but interrelated policy challenges: climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation (which includes building up resilience) and managing transition risks. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a multilateral institution with global reach and near-universal membership. Therefore, along with other international organisations, it has an important role to play in addressing the policy challenges posed by climate change. This paper discusses the contribution the IMF makes and can make in its three areas of competence: surveillance, lending and technical assistance. The paper concludes that the IMF has significantly increased its engagement in climate change matters in recent years but should further intensify its efforts in ways that are fully consistent with its mandate. JEL Classification: F3, F33, F34, O19, Q5, Q48, Q54

We examine the international effects of adverse loan supply and aggregate demand shocks originating in the euro area and the U.S.A. For that purpose, we use a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model and isolate disturbances stemming from loan supply from those of four other macroeconomic shocks by means of sign restrictions. Our general results are as follows: Domestic and international responses of total credit and output to an adverse loan supply shock are substantial. They are more pronounced than the responses to an aggregate demand shock. Under both types of shocks, total credit decreases considerably more strongly than output in the long run, implying a reduction in financial deepening. This deleveraging process is particularly pronounced in the case of loan supply shocks. Taking a regional angle, Central-, Eastern- and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) and even considerably more the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are the most strongly affected regions, and their total credit and output responses are stronger than in the country of shock origin. This is true for both types of structural shocks in the euro area and in the U.S.A. Last, historical decompositions of deviations from trend growth show that for the euro area developments, foreign shocks originating in the U.S.A., the UK and the CESEE and CIS regions feature most prominently, while for the U.S. developments, foreign shocks emanating from the euro area and China play a considerable role.

In this paper, we examine international transmission of the negative credit supply shock, which originated in the euro area and the US. We use the multi-country global vector autoregression (GVAR) approach with trade and bilateral banking exposures as weights, and identify five structural shocks via sign restrictions. Special focus of this research is on CESEE - a region that shares strong financial linkages with the euro area. Our main results are as follows. First, US-specific shocks account for a significant share in explaining the deviations from growth trends in output and total credit in both the euro area and the US; second, compared to a domestic aggregate demand shock, the economic downturn caused by the credit supply shock in the US and the euro area can bring more harm in the long run, yet the international spillover of the former is stronger; third, the transmission of euro area shocks to emerging Europe is faster and more pronounced compared to US shocks; fourth, there is strong heterogeneity in responses of emerging Europe to shocks in the euro area and the US.

Brunnermeier et al., (2017) propose a securitisation solution for the bank-sovereign doom-loop. This shields senior tranche investors from actual defaults but whether it stabilises flight-to-safety panics is unclear. We apply dynamic VaR and Marginal Expected Shortfall methods to assess whether real-time risks to investors are attenuated by holding sovereign bond-backed securities. Price dynamics are derived using a Monte Carlo method. We find that holders of the senior tranche would be as safe as holders of German bunds. Mezzanine risk exposure would be moderate. The junior tranche experiences less severe shocks than high-risk sovereigns. The proposal significantly reduces destabilising market dynamics.