Casual empiricism suggests that unwarrantedʺ wage changes, defined as the part of wage growth that is not explained by changes in labour productivity, are negatively associated with the return on capital. The main point of this paper is to show that unwarrantedʺ wage changes have no causal...

Following Turkey's application for EU membership in 1987, a Customs Union (CU) between Turkey and the EU, mainly covering trade in manufacturing goods and processed agricultural products, came into effect in 1995. In addition to a large agricultural sector, Turkey also specializes in the...

This paper examines the impact of labour and product market reforms on economic growth in 25 OECD countries between 1985 and 2013, and tests whether this impact is conditioned by the fiscal policy stance, i.e. whether there are fiscal expansions or adjustments. Our local projection results...

In this paper we argue that strong political economy forces explain the rush of the EU to expand eastwards. We use a model of vertical product differentiation in order to claim that technologically- advanced EU firms (residing in high-income member countries) prefer a mutual market-opening with...

This paper offers a meta-regression analysis of the literature on the drivers of financial development. Our results based on 1900 estimates suggest that institutional quality is positively correlated to both private sector credit and stock market capitalization (both as share of GDP). Domestic...

This paper reports the results of a survey among private sector economists about credibility and transparency of central banks. In line with the survey of Alan Blinder among central bankers, we asked participants in Ifo s World Economic Survey to answer questions on the importance and...

Two macro models one for a closed economy and the other for a small open economy are used to examine the scope for income redistribution and employment creation. In particular, the introduction of both a guaranteed annual income (basic income) and an employment subsidy are examined, and these...

Using the measures proposed by Mink et al. (2012), we reexamine the coherence of business cycles in the euro area using a long sample period. We also analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business cycle coherence and examine whether our measures for business cycle coherence indicate a...