An integrated banking system saved Nevada after a local real estate boom turned to bust. Without an integrated banking system, the same wasn’t true of Ireland. This column argues that comparing Ireland and Nevada shows that banking union is far more important for Europe than current proposals of fiscal union. And, in the absence of a proper banking union that covers losses, it seems ever more likely that Europe will be pushed back towards nationally segmented financial markets.

How do members of existing monetary unions share risk? Drawing on a decade of research, this column argues that fiscal transfers in fact make a limited contribution to economic coherence. In the context of Europe’s current crisis, the evidence suggests that unfinished capital market integration must be completed if we wish to see adequate and effective risk sharing.

What are the spillover effects within a fiscal union? This column looks at evidence within bond markets for individual US states and the market for US Treasury securities. Results are twofold. First, there are negative spillovers between most markets for individual US state bonds. Second, there is no substantial spillover effect between shocks originating from state securities and from federal markets, except for a few large issuers.

Does Europe need a fiscal union to support its monetary union? This column argues that the cause of Europe’s problems is not public sector ill discipline but rather private sector ill discipline. In such a situation, it asks whether we should be trying to save a drowning man by putting him in a straightjacket.

In the last few months, several Vox columns have drawn parallels between Europe today and an emerging – and even less stable – United States in the eighteenth century. This column stresses that Europe’s leaders in search of a fiscal union need not seek to replicate the US experience but they should at least learn from it.

The first major crisis in the era of independent central banks is severely testing that independence – nowhere more so than the Eurozone. This column argues that the ECB is monetising the sovereign debt – a view widely held in Germany. It argues that the ECB is the Eurozone’s economic government with the power to enforce comprehensive rescue measures, up to and including a fiscal transfer union.

Europe, and the Eurozone especially, is years into an economic crisis. This column argues that if the euro is to survive, Eurozone citizens will have to accept the surrender of economic policy decision-making on an unprecedented scale.

One of the many proposals for escaping the Eurozone crisis is to follow in the footsteps of Argentina since its currency fiasco a decade ago. This column points out the realities of such a path: regressive wealth transfers and debt dilution. Against this dismal backdrop, a fiscal union might well be a better option.