IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5163.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Has the Eurozone Become Less Fragile? Some Empirical Tests

Author

Listed:
  • Paul De Grauwe
  • Yuemei Ji

Abstract

In this paper we provide empirical evidence documenting the nature of the Eurozone’s fragility. We find that during periods of turmoil, financial markets have tended to impose strong programs of austerity on member countries of the Eurozone. This confirms the evidence we found in a previous paper (De Grauwe and Ji(2013)). In addition we find that the panic-induced austerity, as it occurs mainly during periods of recession, has the effect of reducing the power of the automatic stabilizers in the government budgets, thereby making the economic downturns more intense. We find evidence that this feature has been present in the Eurozone. Our policy conclusion is that the institutional changes that have been introduced in the Eurozone since the start of the sovereign debt crisis are insufficient to safeguard the Eurozone from future crises.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul De Grauwe & Yuemei Ji, 2015. "Has the Eurozone Become Less Fragile? Some Empirical Tests," CESifo Working Paper Series 5163, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5163
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5163.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlo Altavilla & Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza, 2016. "The Financial and Macroeconomic Effects of the OMT Announcements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(3), pages 29-57, September.
    2. Nathalie Girouard & Christophe André, 2005. "Measuring Cyclically-adjusted Budget Balances for OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 434, OECD Publishing.
    3. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1986. "Rational and Self-fulfilling Balance-of-Payments Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 72-81, March.
    4. Arghyrou, Michael G. & Kontonikas, Alexandros, 2012. "The EMU sovereign-debt crisis: Fundamentals, expectations and contagion," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 658-677.
    5. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801, June.
    6. Paul De Grauwe, 2014. "The Governance of a Fragile Eurozone," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Exchange Rates and Global Financial Policies, chapter 12, pages 297-320, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Olivier Blanchard & Roberto Perotti, 2002. "An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1329-1368.
    8. Robert J. Barro & Charles J. Redlick, 2011. "Macroeconomic Effects From Government Purchases and Taxes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 51-102.
    9. Attinasi, Maria Grazia & Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Nickel, Christiane, 2009. "What explains the surge in euro area sovereign spreads during the financial crisis of 2007-09?," Working Paper Series 1131, European Central Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. León Padilla & Ángel Rodriguez García-Brazales, 2021. "Can South America form an optimal monetary area? A structural vector autoregression analysis," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 309-329, May.
    2. Karl Aiginger, 2016. "New Dynamics for Europe: Reaping the Benefits of Socio-ecological Transition – Part I: Synthesis. WWWforEurope Deliverable No. 11," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58791, April.
    3. Cavallo, Antonella & Ribba, Antonio, 2018. "Measuring the effects of oil price and Euro-area shocks on CEECs business cycles," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 74-96.
    4. Bole, Velimir & Oblak, Ana & Prašnikar, Janez & Trobec, Domen, 2018. "Financial frictions and indebtedness of Balkan firms: A comparison with Mediterranean and Central European countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 790-809.
    5. Orlowski, Lucjan T., 2016. "Co-movements of non-Euro EU currencies with the Euro," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 376-383.
    6. Viktor Dinev, 2017. "“Macroeconomic Imbalances” Factor for the Euro Area Debt Crisis," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 142-177.
    7. Bauer, Christian & Adolph, Marc-Patrick, 2021. "Limited joint liability in structured Eurobonds: Pricing the political costs," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei, 2014. "How much Fiscal Discipline in a Monetary Union?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 348-360.
    2. de Grauwe, Paul & Ji, Yuemei, 2015. "Market sentiments and the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone," FinMaP-Working Papers 28, Collaborative EU Project FinMaP - Financial Distortions and Macroeconomic Performance: Expectations, Constraints and Interaction of Agents.
    3. Mertens, Karel & Ravn, Morten O., 2014. "A reconciliation of SVAR and narrative estimates of tax multipliers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 1-19.
    4. Afonso, António & Arghyrou, Michael G. & Gadea, María Dolores & Kontonikas, Alexandros, 2018. "“Whatever it takes” to resolve the European sovereign debt crisis? Bond pricing regime switches and monetary policy effects," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-30.
    5. Székely, István P. & Turrini, Alessandro & Röger, Werner, 2010. "Banking crises, Output Loss and Fiscal Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 7815, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Paweł Borys & Piotr Ciżkowicz & Andrzej Rzońca, 2014. "Panel Data Evidence on the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks in the EU New Member States," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 35, pages 189-224, June.
    7. Javier Andrés & José Emilio Boscá & Javier Ferri, 2011. "Household Leverage and Fiscal Multipliers," Working Papers 1103, International Economics Institute, University of Valencia.
    8. Ricardo Félix & Gabriela Castro & José Maria & Paulo Júlio, 2013. "Fiscal Multipliers in a Small Euro Area Economy: How Big Can They Get in Crisis Times?," EcoMod2013 5307, EcoMod.
    9. James Cloyne & Òscar Jordà & Alan M. Taylor, 2020. "Decomposing the Fiscal Multiplier," Working Paper Series 2020-12, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    10. Valerie A. Ramey, 2019. "Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: What Have We Learned from the Renaissance in Fiscal Research?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 89-114, Spring.
    11. María Lorena Marí Del Cristo & Marta Gómez-Puig, 2013. "Fiscal dynamics in a dollarized, oil-exporting country: Ecuador," Working Papers 13-06, Asociación Española de Economía y Finanzas Internacionales.
    12. Sheremirov, Viacheslav & Spirovska, Sandra, 2022. "Fiscal multipliers in advanced and developing countries: Evidence from military spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    13. Sylvain Leduc & Daniel Wilson, 2013. "Roads to Prosperity or Bridges to Nowhere? Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Public Infrastructure Investment," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 89-142.
    14. Peren Arin, K. & Koray, Faik & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2015. "Fiscal multipliers in good times and bad times," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 303-311.
    15. António Afonso & Ricardo Sousa, 2011. "The macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy in Portugal: a Bayesian SVAR analysis," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 10(1), pages 61-82, April.
    16. Quaghebeur, Ewoud, 2019. "Learning And The Size Of The Government Spending Multiplier," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(8), pages 3189-3224, December.
    17. Tommaso Monacelli & Roberto Perotti & Antonella Trigari, 2013. "Taxes and the Labor Market," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Luis Felipe Céspedes & Jordi Galí (ed.),Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance, edition 1, volume 17, chapter 2, pages 27-58, Central Bank of Chile.
    18. Kasselaki, Maria Th. & Tagkalakis, Athanasios O., 2016. "Fiscal policy and private investment in Greece," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 53-106.
    19. Della Posta, Pompeo, 2016. "Currency and external debt crises: A unifying framework," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 723-736.
    20. Pablo Hernández de Cos & Enrique Moral-Benito, 2016. "Fiscal multipliers in turbulent times: the case of Spain," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 1589-1625, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Eurozone; austerity; automatic budget stabilizers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5163. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.