The Economics of Fiscal Rules and Debt Sustainability.

Because they exert cross-border spillover effects, fiscal policies of individual EU member states are a common concern for the entire EU.

Public support for European cooperation in the procurement, stockpiling and distribution of medicines.

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak has heightened ongoing political debate about the international joint procurement of medicines and medical countermeasures. The European Union (EU) has developed what remains largely contractual and decentralized international procurement cooperation. The corona crisis has broadened and deepened public debate on such cooperation, in particular on the scope of cooperation, solidarity in the allocation of such cooperation, and delegation of cooperative decision-making.

The maturity of sovereign debt issuance in the euro area.

We use information on new sovereign debt issues in the euro area to explore the drivers behind the debt maturity decisions of governments. We set up a theoretical model for the maturity structure that trades off the preference for liquidity services provided by short-term debt, roll-over risk and price risk. The average debt maturity is negatively related to both the level and the slope of the yield curve.