Narrow Results

Due to rigid rules, incomplete institutions and concentration on short-run fiscal discipline, economic and institutional diversity and insufficient reforms caused the progressive segmentation of the Eurozone. Insufficient integration process is due to lack of trust among member countries and the need to keep a hard budget constraint of national budgets to avoid uncontrolled inflationary pressure and moral hazard. Although understandable in the short run, this situation is causing serious economic and social costs and damages to the development of vulnerable countries. The paper enquires possible solutions to this dangerous stalemate, that could also provide useful suggestions for other countries.

In this paper, we derive a cost-minimizing approach for governments in the eurozone that have to define their debt structure in terms of currency of issuance and maturity. We introduce and characterize the concept of weighted coalitional $\alpha$-equilibrium to assure stability of two tiers of the eurozone, the stronger (White) countries and the weaker (Yolk) countries. The equilibrium presents both the Pareto optimality of the countries in each tier and the stability against any deviation of each subcoalition. In a practical way, it would require either strong political integration within each tier or considerable market pressure.

The current paper investigates the impact of sovereign ratings on sudden stops of capital in the context of the Eurozone. Our analysis focuses on the qualitative aspect of ratings on the hypothesis that such aspect has a concrete impact on capital movements. A panel probit model is utilized for our purposes. We distinguish between net and gross capital inflows, while we also draw a distinction between long-term and short-term oriented capital. Our results confirm the influence of sovereign ratings for the majority of our model specifications. They also appear to be most significant in the case of short-term flows.

This paper provides a novel perspective in determining the Granger causality of sentiment across the US, Latin America, Eurozone, Japan and Asia (excluding Japan), based on monthly data covering the period of January 2003–November 2017. Using a survey-based sentiment index of “sentix”, our results suggest strong evidence of nonlinearity and structural breaks making the use of linear causality models unreliable. Using a kernel-based multivariate nonlinear causality test, we find that causality runs from Eurozone to the US, Asia and Japan, with Japan also causing the Eurozone sentiment, and Latin America causing the Japanese sentiment. Interestingly, when we apply rolling estimations to detect time-varying causality for the cases of Eurozone and the US, Eurozone and Asia, Eurozone and Japan and Latin America and Japan, the results suggest evidence of bidirectional spillovers during certain months of the recent global financial crisis, and thereafter. Overall, our findings indicate that the sentiments of Japan, Asia and the US are related quite strongly with that of the Eurozone, as well as the sentiments of Japan and Latin America.

The global financial crisis of 2008–2009 that was triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy produced a liquidity problem in the shadow banking in the United States and a sovereign debt problem in Europe. The European financial crisis revealed that the European Monetary Union's (EMU) architectural deficiencies led to the increase of risk premia and poverty, especially for the South-West Euro-Area Periphery (SWEAP) countries.

The main objectives of this research are to determine the factors responsible for the market pricing of sovereign default risk, to analyze the causalities of Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) spreads that have been taken as a proxy variable for the market pricing of sovereign default risk, to examine possible pricing discrimination and asymmetries between SWEAP and non-SWEAP (Not South-West Euro-Area Periphery) countries, structural changes in the pattern of the CDS spreads throughout and after the crisis, and possible evidence of speculation against the SWEAP group of countries.

In a panel data regression setting, we have constructed a dynamic pricing model of sovereign default risk for 13 euro area countries using quarterly data for the period 2008–2013. We spotted structural changes in the pattern of CDS spreads across 2010, identified as the worst year of the Eurozone crisis, as well as significant speculation and financial discrimination against SWEAP countries by the financial intermediaries associated with this derivative market. Significant variables comprised of the grading rate forwarded one period, the current governments bond yield, and the inflation rate, as well as the variables related to the public debt lagged one period. All variables, amongst other robust predictors of the CDS spreads, have been proven statistically and were economically significant, except for the fiscal space of one quarter forward of the fiscal balance, which was proven to be only weakly significant. More specifically, the variables related to fiscal space (public debt and fiscal balance) as well as the inflation rate have been proven statistically significant throughout the global financial crisis (2008–2010) and the grading rate in the period 2011–2013. Nevertheless, the government's bond yield remained significant.

The main limitation of this research was the endogeneity between bond and CDS-derivative markets, emerged from the latter variable. In total, our evidence of self-fulfilling expectations and herding behavior may indicate the logic of second generation crisis model for the crisis in Eurozone 2010.