This report has been prepared to provide a general overview and assessment of the performance of the Portuguese economy under the EU/IMF adjustment programme and the remaining challenges ahead. Portugal's recent exit from the Programme implied the lapsing of the 12th and final review of...

Between the start of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, and early 2010, almost four million jobs were lost in the euro area. Employment began to rise again in the first half of 2011, but declined once more at the end of that year and remains at around three million workers below the...

The Great Recession and the subsequent European crisis may have long-lasting effects on aggregate demand, aggregate supply, and, hence, on macroeconomic performance over the medium and long-run. Besides the fact that financial crisis last longer and are succeeded by slower recoveries, and apart...

This paper exploits a unique cross-country, firm-level survey to study the responses of European firms to the sharp demand and credit contraction triggered by the global Great Recession of 2009. The analysis reveals that cost reduction-particularly labour cost reduction through the adjustment of...

The European fiscal governance framework remains incomplete, hindering policy coordination during economic shocks and affecting the transmission of the single monetary policy. High public debt and low public investment worsen resilience across Member States. Many policymakers, institutions, and...

The report assesses compliance with the terms and conditions set out in the updated MoU. The MoU was updated following the fourth review mission and was agreed between the Cypriot authorities and the programme partners, i.e. the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the...

In the presence of the zero lower bound, standard business cycle models with a Taylor-type monetary policy rule are prone to equilibrium multiplicity. A drop in confidence can drive the economy into a liquidity trap without any change in fundamentals. Using a prototypical sticky-price model, I...