We investigate the effect of social interactions on labor market outcomes using a direct measure of social contacts based on information about individuals' three best friends and their characteristics. We examine the effect of the number of employed friends on the transition from non-employment...

We provide evidence on the fit of the hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve for selected euro zone countries, the US and the UK. Instead of imposing rational expectations and estimating the Phillips curve by the Generalized Method of Moments, we follow Roberts (1997) and Adam and Padula (2003) and...

In this paper we model the volatility of the spread between the overnight interest rate and the central bank policy rate (the policy spread) for the euro area and the UK during the two main phases of the financial crisis that began in late 2007. During the crisis, the policy spread exhibited...

The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

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...

This paper analyses the long-memory properties of US and European stock indices, as well as their linkages, using fractional integration and fractional cointegration techniques. These methods are more general and have higher power than the standard ones usually employed in the literature. The...

Is unemployment the overwhelming determinant of domestic violence that many commentators expect it to be? The contribution of this paper is to examine, theoretically and empirically, how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic abuse. The key theoretical prediction is that male...

We analyse the voting pattern in the June 23rd referendum on the continued participation of the United Kingdom in the European Union and evaluate the reasons for the results. We find that regions where GDP per capita is low, a high proportion of people have low education, a high proportion is...

We explore the role of the transfers that UK regions received from the European structural and cohesion funds, as well as other economic and social factors, in determining the support for the Remain vote in the Brexit referendum. We find that past European transfers have played virtually no role...

Unemployment in the United Kingdom has fallen from high European-style levels to US levels. I argue that the key reasons are the reform of monetary policy, in 1993 with the adoption of inflation targeting and in 1997 with the establishment of the independent Monetary Policy Committee, and second...