The European Semester is a yearly process of the European Union to improve economic policy coordination and ensure the implementation of the EU’s economic rules. Each Semester concludes with recommendations for the euro area as a whole and for each EU member state. We show that implementation...

The long-term decline in gross public investment in European Union countries mirrors the trend in other advanced economies, but recent developments have been different: public investment has increased elsewhere, but in the EU it has declined and even collapsed in the most vulnerable countries,...

The July 2013 European Council recommendations to the euro area recognise a number of fiscal and macrostructural challenges, but do not fully exploit the options made possible by the European economic governance framework. There are particular problems with the Council's suggestions for the euro...

Low interest rates, asset purchases and other accommodative monetary policy measures tend to increase asset prices and thereby benefit the wealthier segments of society, at least in the short-term, given that asset holdings are mainly concentrated among richest households. Such policies also...