Recent price developments in the euro area demonstrate that deflation is a serious issue of concern. Some euro area countries are already facing a deflation in the usual macroeconomic sense of a 'general price decline'. This article discusses the economic consequences of deflation and suggests...

Recent public debate on the costs and benefits of EU membership has focused more on the costs and less on the benefits. This paper explores the benefits from improved regulatory or policy implementation and enforcement. If actual regulatory enforcement differs from the socially optimal level,...

The extraordinary measures taken by the ECB to combat the financial crisis have led many observers to question whether the bank has put its independence at risk. The bank’s vow to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro has added a second (and potentially contradictory) goal alongside its...

The countdown to the realisation of the Single European Market at the end of 1992 is taking place parallel to drastic political and economic changes in Eastern Europe Both of these processes will affect relations between the EC and the CMEA countries The following article analyses the possible...

The implications that the internal market could hold for the EC's foreign trade relations are a cause of considerable worry to countries in the Third World. Particularly the ACP countries, for many of whom the EC is their foremost product and import market, fear the possible strengthening of...