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Addressing the safety trilemma: a safe sovereign asset for the eurozone

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  • van Riet, Ad
Abstract
At the 25th anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, this paper reviews the merits of introducing a safe sovereign asset for the eurozone. The triple euro area crisis showed the costly consequences of ignoring the ‘safety trilemma’. Keeping a national safe sovereign asset (the German bund) as the cornerstone of the financial system is incompatible with having free capital mobility and maintaining economic and financial stability in a monetary union. The euro area needs a single safe sovereign asset. However, eurobonds are only foreseen after full fiscal integration. To address the safety trilemma member countries must therefore act as the joint sovereign behind the euro and choose from two options. First, they could establish a credible multipolar system of safe national sovereign assets. For this purpose, they could all issue both senior and junior tranches of each national government bond in a proportion such that the expected safety of the senior tranche is the same across countries while the junior tranche would absorb any sovereign default risk. Additional issuance of national GDP-linked bonds could insure governments against a deep recession that might lead to a self-fulfilling default and thereby help to make the junior tranche less risky. The second option is that the member countries together produce a common safe sovereign asset for a truly integrated and stable monetary union by creating synthetic eurobonds comprising both a safe senior claim and a risky junior claim on a diversified portfolio of national government bonds. This appears a more effective solution to the safety trilemma – especially when euro area governments would also issue national GDP-linked bonds – but it requires flanking measures to control for moral hazard. JEL Classification: F33, F34, G15, H63, H70

Suggested Citation

  • van Riet, Ad, 2017. "Addressing the safety trilemma: a safe sovereign asset for the eurozone," ESRB Working Paper Series 35, European Systemic Risk Board.
    • Handle: RePEc:srk:srkwps:201735
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    Cited by:

    1. Athanasios Orphanides, 2020. "The fiscal–monetary policy mix in the euro area: challenges at the zero lower bound," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 35(103), pages 461-517.
    2. Francesco Paolo Mongelli & Gonzalo Camba-Mendez, 2018. "The Financial Crisis and Policy Responses in Europe (2007–2018)," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 60(4), pages 531-558, December.
    3. Eichacker, Nina, 2020. "German Public Banks, Financial Competition, and Crisis: Institutional Change in German Banking and Financial Vulnerability Before the Global Financial Crisis," SocArXiv jkp5u, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ivo Arnold, 2021. "An Interest Stabilisation Mechanism to Unburden the ECB," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 56(5), pages 274-277, September.
    5. van Riet, Ad, 2017. "Monetary Policy Stretched to the Limit: How Could Governments Support the European Central Bank?," MPRA Paper 83451, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. Schelkle, Waltraud, 2018. "The political economy of monetary solidarity: revisiting the Euro experiment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 90201, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. van Riet, Ad, 2016. "Government Funding Privileges in European Financial Law : Making Public Debt Everybody's Favourite?," Discussion Paper 2016-045, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    9. Agnieszka Zawadzka & Małgorzata Grzywińska‐Rąpca, 2023. "Financial savings structure—Eurozone and Visegrad Group," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 699-717, January.
    10. Zorell, Nico, 2017. "Large net foreign liabilities of euro area countries," Occasional Paper Series 198, European Central Bank.
    11. Waltraud Schelkle, 2018. "The political economy of monetary solidarity: revisiting the euro experiment," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 44(3), pages 371-403.
    12. Guter-Sandu, Andrei & Murau, Steffen, 2022. "The Eurozone’s evolving fiscal ecosystem: mitigating fiscal discipline by governing through off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 109790, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. López-Espinosa, Germán & Moreno, Antonio & Rubia, Antonio & Valderrama, Laura, 2017. "Sovereign tail risk," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 174-188.
    14. Ad van Riet, 2018. "The European Central Bank as the Only Game in Town: How Could Fiscal Policy Makers Play Along?," Credit and Capital Markets, Credit and Capital Markets, vol. 51(1), pages 93-111.
    15. Arnold, Ivo J.M. & Soederhuizen, Beau, 2018. "Sovereign bond holdings and monetary policy operations in the euro area," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1243-1254.
    16. Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Schnabel, Isabel & Truger, Achim & Wieland, Volker, 2019. "Den Strukturwandel meistern. Jahresgutachten 2019/20 [Dealing with Structural Change. Annual Report 2019/20]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201920.
    17. 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).
    18. repec:wsr:pbrief:y:2017:i:035 is not listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital mobility; safe sovereign asset; safety trilemma; synthetic eurobonds;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General

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