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KEY ISSUESStand-by Arrangement (SBA): A 24-month SBA with access of SDR 1,751.34 million (about ?1.98 billion, 170 percent of quota) was approved by the Executive Board on September 27, 2013. The second and third tranches of SDR 194.7 million each (cumulative SDR 584.1 million) would be made available upon completion of the first and second reviews. Balance-of-payments assistance of ?2 billion is also available from the European Union (EU). The authorities treat both arrangements as precautionary.Program status: Four of five end-December 2013 quantitative performance criteria and four of five

This Policy Brief compares macroeconomic developments in France and Germany since the beginning of monetary union. Although the French economy has been growing slower than the German economy since the financial crisis, the two economies have grown at roughly the same rate since the beginning of monetary union. A comparison of the two labour markets also provides a more complex picture than commonly assumed: France has a much higher unemployment rate than Germany, but the volume of work (total hours worked) has increased more since the beginning of monetary union than in Germany. Finally, it is noticeable that domestic demand in Germany has slowed growth for a long time while it played a significant role in France. This changed only in the recent upswing after the financial crisis. This upswing in Germany has also been much more balanced than before. From a pan-European perspective, it is important that the labour market reforms of the Macron government maintain the balance of power in the French labour market. In Germany, on the other hand, the path taken by more expansionary fiscal and wage policy should be systematically continued in order to bring the inflation path back to the ECB's target. ; Der Policy Brief vergleicht die makroökonomischen Entwicklungen Frankreichs und Deutschlands seit Beginn der Währungsunion. Zwar wächst die französische Volkswirtschaft seit der Finanzmarktkrise schwächer als die deutsche, aber seit dem Beginn der Währungsunion sind die beiden Volkswirtschaften bis heute in etwa gleich stark gewachsen. Auch ein Vergleich der beiden Arbeitsmärkte liefert ein komplexeres Bild als gemeinhin angenommen: So hat Frankreich zwar eine deutlich höhere Arbeitslosenquote als Deutschland, aber das Arbeitsvolumen (gearbeitete Stunden) ist dort seit Beginn der Währungsunion stärker gestiegen als in Deutschland. Schließlich fällt auf, dass die inländische Nachfrage in Deutschland über lange Zeit bremsend auf das Wachstum wirkte, während sie in Frankreich eine bedeutende Rolle spielte. Dies änderte sich erst im jüngsten Aufschwung nach der Finanzkrise. Inzwischen ist auch dieser Aufschwung in Deutschland deutlich balancierter als zuvor. Aus gesamteuropäischer Sicht ist es nun von Bedeutung, dass die Arbeitsmarktreformen der Regierung Macron die Machtbalance auf dem französischen Arbeitsmarkt erhalten. In Deutschland sollte hingegen der eingeschlagene Weg expansiverer Fiskal- und Lohnpolitik konsequent fortgesetzt werden, um den Inflationspfad zurück auf die Ziellinie der EZB zu bringen.

This article is referred to the general direction of the economic policy adopted by the member states in year 1999. It is considered in the mixture of measures mainly aimed at contributing to growth, employment and stability, on the basis of a monetary policy. These policies, that are referred in the article, are aimed at a preserved price stability, according to the convention, continuous efforts to get individual budgets balanced or with surpluses in a medium-term perspective, whilst, at the same time, the developments in the labor markets and salaries will be consistent with the objective for price stability and increased employment. ; peer-reviewed

KEY ISSUESSetting: Swaziland has gradually recovered from the fiscal crisis of 2010-11, buoyed by the improved revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Growth modestly recovered, and international reserves rebounded. Swaziland's challenges, however, remain significant, in view of its high vulnerability to exogenous shocks and its sluggish growth performance, while facing significant social and development challenges with high unemployment and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Swaziland now stands at a critical juncture to strengthen its resilience to exogenous shocks, address its w

Introduction -- Real, Monetary and Fiscal Integration in the European Union: A Prototype Model of European Integration - The Case of Austria -- Trade Agreements and Regional Disparities -- Strategic Macroeconomic Policies in a Monetary Union -- Determinants of Maximum Sustainable Government Debt -- The Long Italian Stagnation and the Welfare Effects of Outsourcing -- Economic Growth, Technological Change, and Climate Policy: Status, Wealth Distribution, and Endogenous Economic Growth -- Technological Change in Information and Communication - Consequences for Science -- Elements of the Economics of the Very-Long Term - Functionalities, Structures, Mechanisms and Institutions -- Is There a First-Mover Advantage in the International Climate Policy?- Environmental Policy in an Open Economy: Refocusing Climate Policy to Address International Trade Spillover.

&b&Hauptbeschreibung&/b&&br/&The current relationship between the Nordic countries and the European Union appears complex and confusing. Although Denmark, in 1973, and Sweden and Finland, in 1995, joined the European Union, the entry of Norway into the Union was rejected in the plebiscites of 1972 and 1994. Furthermore, Nordic EU members enjoy permanent exceptions to their integration into the EU: Denmark and Sweden, like the U.K., have declined to become part of the monetary union. Finland is essentially the only Nordic country that entered the EU without substantial exceptions. A membership

The member states of the European Union have given up sovereignty in quite a number of policy areas and subjected themselves to joint decisionmaking at the European level. Policy instruments are no longer available nationally in many policy areas, including monetary policy, trade policy, the more important part of competition policy, subsidy control, and a large number of the regulations in the product market, the environmental arena, and the capital market. The maneuvering space for national economic policy-makers has been reduced considerably. In quite a few areas in which decisions are taken with a qualified majority, the member countries can be outvoted and have to accept the decisions taken by others. This paper surveys the new decision space of economic policy of a member state including the latest constitutional arrangement.

We study the conditions under which unconventional (balance-sheet) monetary policy can rule out self-fulfilling sovereign default in a model with optimizing but discretionary scale and monetary policymakers. When purchasing sovereign debt, the central bank effectively swaps risky government paper for monetary liabilities only exposed to inflation risk, thus yielding a lower interest rate. As central bank purchases reduce the (ex ante) costs of debt, we characterize a critical threshold beyond which, absent fundamental fiscal stress, the government strictly prefers primary surplus adjustment to default. Because default may still occur for fundamental reasons, however, the central bank faces the risk of losses on sovereign debt holdings, which may generate inefficient inflation. We show that these losses do not necessarily undermine the credibility of a backstop, nor the monetary authorities' ability to pursue its inflation objectives. Backstops are credible if either the central bank enjoys fiscal backing or fiscal authorities are sufficiently averse to inflation. ; The ADEMU Working Paper Series is being supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 European Union funding for Research & Innovation, grant agreement No 649396.

Tiny changes in the American monetary policy can have dramatic effects on the rest of the world because of its double role of national and international currency. This is what I call the Triffin dilemma, an ever green concept in international finance. In the paper I show how it works through three examples: price of commodities, dollarization, and the international financial position of the US. I argue that to solve this situation, it would be important to create a more democratic monetary system, in which all the countries have a decision weight. In particular, I think that globalization and regionalization should be the two forces leading towards the new monetary system. The main economies should adopt the same currency through a system of fixed exchange rates (global money); developing countries should create regional monetary unions (regional money), preserving the real exchange rate as real shock absorber, but gaining in terms of time consistency and credibility.

Festering for a long time now, the financial collapse being witnessed has proven more problematic than any crisis in the past. The global financial meltdown has affected and continues to affect the livelihood of almost everyone in an increasingly interconnected world. Institutions have collapsed, stock markets have plummeted and governments in even the wealthiest nations have been forced to bail out their financial systems. The author compares Finland's economic crisis of the 1990s with that which is sending countries into disarray on a worldwide level today and establishes the reasons and possible solutions for this recession. He notes how fiscal and monetary policy measures alone cannot build a bridge over this severe recession. Moreover, he concludes by stressing that this crisis must be addressed alongside and not to the exclusion of other problems, underlining the importance of strengthening supervisory frameworks at a global and, more precisely, at EU level.

Has a shift occurred in the internal market paradigm towards an economic union paradigm, whereby the internal market is used to foster economic policy goals adjacent to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)? The Banking Union is a case in point in this shift, as it stands at the crossroads between the internal market and the EMU. In the Banking Union, internal market and monetary and economic policy objectives are intertwined. This article maps out this shift and assesses how Article 114 TFEU has been used in it. The article argues that although the establishment of the Banking Union seems to be a natural continuum of developing the internal market and the EMU, such use of Article 114 TFEU is questionable in light of current doctrine and problematic due to the asymmetry of the EMU.

In light of persistent in ation dispersion and rising debt levels in the EMU, this paper investigates the welfare implications of budget-neutral fiscal policies that counteract in ation differentials. In a two-country DSGE model of a monetary union with traded and non-traded goods a national fiscal authority is able to reduce welfare losses arising from asymmetric shocks by following a Taylor-type rule for consumption taxes while using labour income taxes to balance its budget. Under technology and government spending shocks welfare losses can be reduced by up to 15%.

"To remain masters of their destiny, six European countries agreed to establish among themselves a European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. To remain masters of their creation, the national governments devised a rather unique institutional system whose fundamental features can only be amended by unanimity. In fact, to enter into force, any amendment made to the European founding treaties has always required ratification by all the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. Remarkably, this demanding procedural requirement has not precluded a spectacular 'widening' of the membership of what is now known as the European Union (EU) as well as a considerable 'deepening' of the competences conferred on the EU by its Member States. Indeed, from an organisation originally consisting of six countries with a narrow focus on economic matters, the EU has grown beyond recognition. Its 27 Member States now pursue an extensive and diverse set of objectives amongst which one may mention the promotion of balanced and sustainable development of economic activities, the implementation of a common foreign and security policy and the tackling of cross-border crime. In order to effectively pursue these objectives, the EU has also gradually gained the power to legislate in the areas of monetary policy, social policy, environment, consumer protection, asylum and immigration, amongst other things"--Provided by publisher

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the credit expansion process on social welfare through the financial-monetary dimension with a focus on 22 economies from the European Union. In order to achieve this aim, the study seeks, on the one hand, to analyse the short-term dynamics (from one quarter to the other) of the relationships between the total volume of domestic credit to private sector (highlighting thus the credit expansion process) and the GDP per capita (the proxy for social welfare) and, on the other hand, to determine the impact of credit expansion on social welfare on medium and long term using the multiple regression model. The findings revealed that even the correlation between the credit expansion and social welfare is very strong and positive in almost all the analysed countries, the total volume of domestic credit to private sector influences unidirectionally the GDP per capita in only 11 of the 22 states. However, on medium and long term, the credit expansion process has a positive effect on social welfare in all the analysed EU countries.