The standardisation of the European systems of national accounts has progressed significantly in recent years. Some room for interpretation remains in regard to some accounting standards, the periodicity of the data, and the quality of the forecasts of budget deficits. Yet national accounts data...

European Union economies are pressed by (i) a demographic change that induces population ageing and a decline of the workforce, and (ii) a split labour market that is characterized by high levels of unemployment for low -skilled people and a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers. This lack of...

The 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the European Union were unprecedented in a number of economic and policy aspects. This essay provides a broad and in-depth account of the effects of the post-enlargement migration flows on the receiving as well as sending countries in three broader areas: labour...

Whether Europe will be able to stand up to its internal and external challenges crucially depends on its ability to manage its internal mobility and inflows of international migrants. Using a unique expert opinion survey, we document that Europe needs skilled migrants, and skill mismatch is to...

The standard approach of analysing gaps in social and labor market outcomes of different ethnic groups relies on analysis of statistical data about the affected groups. In this paper we go beyond this approach by measuring the views of expert stakeholders involved in minority integration. This...

The social and labor market integration of ethnic minorities in the EU is still a major political, societal and economic challenge. Based on evidence presented in Kahanec and Zimmermann (2011), this policy paper proposes an agenda for diversity and minority integration in the European labor...

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in European merger legislation in 2004. We first propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...

We quantify externalities on profitability and market shares of competing firms in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n - 1 player oligopoly after a merger. Competitors are identified via the European Commission's market investigations and our methodology allows us to...

This paper sheds light on the labor market situation of ethnic minorities in the European Union. Facing a serious measurement challenge and lacking adequate data, we apply several measures of ethnicity and examine various data sources as well as secondary evidence. We find significant gaps...