This paper uses the European Commission’s QUEST macroeconomic model to analyse the impact of structural reforms on economic activity in an environment in which the zero bound on monetary policy rates is temporarily binding. The simulations suggest that although such reforms can have a negative...

The paper analyses China's external position in a multi-region macroeconomic model of the world economy. The model includes a portfolio structure and Forex intervention to proxy net/gross and government/non-government foreign asset positions, capital controls and exchange rate management in...

This paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and performance and offers new empirical EU-based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment. While the literature traditionally treats labour market...

This study of approximately 170 publications shows (a) that US academic economists concentrated on the question "Is the EMU a good or bad thing?", usually adopting the paradigm of optimum currency areas as their main analytical vehicle, (b) that they displayed considerable scepticism towards the...

This essay follows the synergies and complementarities between European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the optimum currency area (OCA) theory. Various advancements in economic theory and econometrics have made it possible to progress from the “early OCA theory†to a...

What can be learnt from revisiting the Optimal Currency Areas (OCA) theory 50 years from its birth, in light of recent advances in open economy macro and monetary theory? This paper presents a stylized micro-founded model of the costs of adopting a common currency, relative to an ideal benchmark...

The Swedish referendum in September 2003 on adopting the euro or keeping the domestic currency, the krona, represents a unique event to examine the public's perceptions of the benefits and costs of monetary unification. The voters chose between the two polar cases of exchange rate regimes:...