The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

This paper provides an analysis of the labour market adjustment to the 2008-2009 recession in terms of employment, unemployment, hours worked and wages. It highlights differences in the response of employment and unemployment across countries and different socioeconomic groups. For all EU Member...

Both common macroeconomic shocks and country-specific developments have subjected the flexibility of wage setting mechanisms in the euro area to a stress test in recent years. Against this background, this paper takes a fresh look at wage flexibility in EMU and attempts to draw a few lessons...

This paper seeks to understand labour share dynamics in Europe over the medium run. After documenting basic empirical regularities, we quantify the contribution of shifts in the sectoral and the employment composition of the economy to labour share movements. The findings from the shift-share...

Food security, natural resources and climate change related questions focusing on a longer time horizon (2050+) are gaining importance. To assess the requirements and challenges entailed with the simulation of long-term issues in the agri-food sector the JRC-IPTS carried out the project...

The paper examines the impact of industrial protection, agricultural export taxes, and overvaluation of the exchange rate on the balance between the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors. Various agricultural terms-of-trade indices are constructed to measure the policy bias against...

The process of the entrepreneurial decision is decomposed in seven engagement levels ranging from “never thought about starting a business†to “gave upâ€, “thinking about itâ€, “taking steps for starting upâ€, “having a young businessâ€,...

Determinants from different streams of literature and spanning different disciplines are used to explain entrepreneurial decisions. A multinomial logit model and survey data from the old 15 EU member states, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and the US are used to establish the effect of...

This paper presents an Eclectic Framework explaining (developments in and determinants of) entrepreneurship incorporating different streams of literature and spanning different disciplines. The Eclectic Framework integrates factors shaping the demand for entrepreneurship on the one hand, with...