Will EMU accelerate or retard structural reform in labour and product markets? The theoretical literature is ambiguous. New descriptive evidence provided in this paper suggests that euro-area countries have made relatively good progress in structural reform. However, it is much less clear...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the empirical relevance of real convergence on the process of nominal convergence for the new EU Member States. We discuss two of the main channels through which real convergence could affect relative prices with respect to the euro area: productivity...

We investigate the public-private wage differentials in ten euro area countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain). To account for differences in employment characteristics between the two sectors, we focus on micro data taken from EU-SILC....

This paper examines whether European regions which incorporate banks with a higher intermediation quality grow faster and are more resilient to negative shocks than its less efficient peers. For this purpose, we measure a bank's intermediation quality by estimating its profit and cost efficiency...

Will EMU accelerate or retard structural reform in labour and product markets? The theoretical literature is ambiguous. New descriptive evidence provided in this paper suggests that euro-area countries have made relatively good progress in structural reform. However, it is much less clear...

Macroeconomic imbalances increase the vulnerability of an economy to adverse shocks, which in turn can lead to crises with severe economic and social costs. We propose an early warning model that predicts such crises. We identify a set of macroeconomic indicators capturing domestic and external...

Results from the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey reveal substantial variation in household net wealth across euro area countries that await explanation. This paper focuses on three main factors for the wealth accumulation process, i) homeownership, ii) housing value...

A balanced current account in the euro area has disguised sizeable net lending imbalances at the country level, exposing the common currency area to severe pressures during the financial crisis. The key contribution of this paper is to evaluate the adjustment process through the lenses of the...

We study the business cycle properties of the four largest euro area economies in the wake of the recent recession episodes. The analysis is based on the factors estimated from a multi-country and multi-sector data-rich environment. We measure alikeness of business cycles by studying the...

Between 2003 and 2008 productivity patterns diverged between the fast growing, newest members of the European Union and the slower paced, elder ones - as would be expected. However, there are also striking divergences within the latter group, with productivity in Southern Europe going into...