Are Bunds special? This paper estimates the “Bund premium” as the difference in convenience yields between other sovereign safe assets and German government bonds adjusted for sovereign credit risk, liquidity and swap market frictions. A higher premium suggests less substitutability of sovereign bonds. We document a rise in the “Bund premium” in the post-crisis period. We show that there is a negative relationship of the premium with the relative supply of German sovereign bonds, which is more pronounced for higher maturities and when risk aversion proxied by bond market volatility is high. Going forward, we expect German government debt supply to remain scarce, with important implications for the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.

Are Bunds special? This paper estimates the “Bund premium” as the difference in convenience yields between other sovereign safe assets and German government bonds adjusted for sovereign credit risk, liquidity and swap market frictions. A higher premium suggests less substitutability of sovereign bonds. We document a rise in the “Bund premium” in the post-crisis period. We show that there is a negative relationship of the premium with the relative supply of German sovereign bonds, which is more pronounced for higher maturities and when risk aversion proxied by bond market volatility is high. Going forward, we expect German government debt supply to remain scarce, with important implications for the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.

After a sharp slowdown starting in 2018, euro area growth is expected to recover over the course of 2019. However, mounting downside risks from global trade tensions, a no-deal Brexit, and market concerns about countries with high public debt emphasize the precarious nature of the forecast. Even in the absence of a major shock, there is a danger that the area could enter a prolonged period of anemic growth and inflation. Policies should focus on supporting growth while also reducing vulnerabilities.

The European Sovereign Debt Crisis: Breaking the Vicious Circle between Sovereigns and Banks explains why the euro area’s progress towards reining in the risks arising from the well-documented bi-directional financial contagion transmission mechanism that links sovereigns to commercial banks has been more prominent compared to the channel of contagion moving from banks to sovereigns. Providing an analysis of the legal and regulatory measures that Europe and the euro area have taken to mitigate the exposure of sovereigns to financial crises generated by commercial banks, this book draws attention to areas where improvements to the arsenal of tools hitherto introduced are either desirable or necessary. Chapters further explain – with recourse to economic and legal arguments – why the channel of contagion moving from sovereigns to commercial banks has proven harder to close, and explores ways in which progress could be made in the direction of closing it so as to avert the risk of future banking sector crises. This work provides essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in sovereign debt crises and the euro-area banking system.

Can Italy and Germany thrive within the confines of the common currency, or do they display two fundamentally incompatible models? This book examines this question by means of detailed comparisons in the fields of labour market policies, welfare provisions and financial and economic management, since the onset of the financial crisis and through the euro and COVID-19 crises. The rapid succession of the financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis and COVID-19 have again brought to the fore questions that have beset European integration since its inception; does the EU promote convergence or divergence? Have these crises served to reveal pre-existing politico-economic incompatibilities or were these incompatibilities created by the euro and the measures propounded by the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)? Should EMU recipes be followed, or should they be fundamentally revised in an effort to come good on the convergence promises underpinning the European project? And, lastly, is the COVID-19 crisis likely to mitigate or exacerbate these problems? These questions are addressed in this volume by means of a tight comparison between Germany and Italy, two countries that have displayed strikingly divergent trajectories but also share many more politico-economic traits than the conventional wisdom would allow for. By exploring in detail how the main elements of the euro and EMU management have played out, the volume highlights the externalities that becoming part of a currency union has created and that strengthened the economic success of one while consolidating the decline of the other and analyses the likely impact of the measures introduced to fight the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, German Politics.

Denmark: Selected Issues