The Euro Crisis: Three Essays

This dissertation is a collection of three essays dealing with selected problems of the Euro Area during its most recent crisis. It applies empirical, theoretical, and institutional analyses to gain new insights into many of its financial aspects. The first essay offers an alternative explanation for the surge in government bond spreads. Many researchers attribute this phenomenon to market sentiment and multiple equilibria alone. We show that an often neglected fundamental variable may drive spreads: a decrease in the expected recovery value of private market participants. With an ever-increasing share of crisis countries’ debt held by official creditors, private investors may feel pushed into the position of subordinated creditors. The other two essays both explain the sharp increase in central bank credit from different perspectives. First, from the national perspective, central banks may be confronted with a classical tragedy-of-the-commons problem, which gives rise to an expansionary bias. Second, from the perspective of the ECB, we argue that the empirical patterns surrounding the liquidity provision in December 2011 are reminiscent of a speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate system

Exit strategies, capital flight and speculative attacks:Europe's version of the trilemma

In the winter 2011/12, a wave of internal capital flight prompted the ECB to abandon its exit strategy and announce an unprecedented monetary expansion. We analyze this episode in several dimensions: (i) we provide an event-study analysis, covering key variables from national central banks' balance sheets, (ii) we rationalize the empirical patterns in a formal discussion of the constraints in a monetary union and (iii) we analyze different indicators of redenomination risk in the euro area. Finally, we argue that the euro area entails an inherent policy trilemma that makes it prone to speculative attacks

The LHCb silicon tracker

The Silicon Tracker is a large-surface silicon micro-strip detector that covers the full acceptance of the experiment in a single tracking station upstream of the spectrometer magnet and the inner-most part of three tracking stations downstream of the magnet. Special emphasis has been put on module quality assurance at all stages of the production. Various tests are performed after each production step and each module goes through several burn-in cycles. The design of the LHCb silicon detectors is described and the main lessons learnt from the R&D phase are summarised. Focus will be on the experience from module production and the quality assurance program

The LHCb Silicon Tracker

Wide pitch silicon micro-strip detectors will be used in both the LHCb Inner Tracker and the Trigger Tracker. In total an area of 12 m$^2$ will covered with silicon using ladders of up to 33 cm in length. The design of both detectors and corresponding test beam results are presented

The LHCb Silicon Tracker

LHCb is one of the experiments for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, dedicated to B-physics and CP-violation measurements. To fully exploit the physics potential, a good tracking performance with high effciency in a high particle density environment close to the beam pipe is required. Silicon strip detectors with large readout pitch and long strips will be used for the LHCb Silicon Tracker. The design and test beam results are presented here

The LHCb Silicon Tracker

LHCb is one of the experiments for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, dedicated to B-physics and CP-violation measurements. To fully exploit the physics potential, a good tracking performance with high effciency in a high particle density environment close to the beam pipe is required. Silicon strip detectors with large readout pitch and long strips will be used for the LHCb Inner Tracker after the magnet and the Trigger Tracker station in front of the magnet. The design of the Silicon Tracker in LHCb and corresponding test beam results are presented here

The LHCb Silicon Inner Tracker

The inner part of the LHCb tracking system will be realised in a silicon microstrip technology. The experimental requirements suggest 20 cm long ladders and a readout pitch of around 240 m. The complete LHCb Inner Tracker system will consist of nine stations with an overall silicon surface area of approximately 14 m2, depending on the final layout of the tracking system. A report about the current design of the silicon ladders and tracking stations of theInner Tracker is given. First characterisations of prototype sensors and test beam results of ladders are presented