Historical experience and the economic literature show that the process of structural change of economies towards more advanced stages of development is associated with a particular pattern of change in the sectoral composition of economic activity. In a first stage, the manufacturing share...

English abstract: This paper explores the differences in accessibility to services between rural and urban areas in EU countries. According to our analysis, rural areas in Spain have worse accessibility to services than their European counterparts, while the differences are not significant in...

Spanish abstract:Las Corporaciones Locales han registrado desde 2012 un superávit fiscal, que contrasta con el déficit registrado en el resto de las Administraciones Públicas. A pesar de la heterogeneidad en la composición del sector, esta mejora en las finanzas públicas se extiende a una...

For central banks, it is crucial to develop and maintain risk identification frameworks that allow them to detect in good time and address potential threats to financial stability with the most appropriate policy tools. This paper reviews the main indicators developed for this purpose by the...

English Abstract: The main proposals for the reform of the European Union’s fiscal policy framework affect three blocks of issues: (i) simplifying the rules to make them more transparent and flexible; (ii) incorporating new supranational risk-sharing instruments into the Economic and Monetary...

After the financial and economic crisis in Europe, a broad consensus has emerged that a stronger fiscal dimension may be needed to complete the architecture of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper analyses the performance of interregional transfers in existing fiscal-federal systems,...

The containment of health care expenditure is one of the major challenges facing public policymakers in the developed countries. This paper provides evidence of significant differences in the cross-country level of efficiency of health care expenditure, meaning that potential cost savings for...

English abstract: In order to curb the advance of COVID-19, Royal Decree-Law 10/2020 of 29 March 2020 stipulated the temporary shutdown of all activities considered non-essential between 30 March and 9 April 2020. This paper uses municipal-level information to quantify the short-term effects of...

This document analyses real-time revisions in output gap estimates published by the European Commission for 15 countries over the period 2002-2014. We find that output gap revisions (both in levels and changes) are mainly driven by GDP growth forecast errors. Also, output gap revisions have...

Spanish abstract: En España, la fracción de la población residente en zonas urbanas ha aumentado desde el 65% hasta más del 87% en el período 1950-2018. Este incremento fue especialmente intenso hasta el final de la década de los setenta, durante el período que, en ocasiones, se denomina...