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...

This paper examines two competing approaches for calculating current account benchmarks, i.e. the external sustainability approach á la Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (LM) versus the structural current accounts literature (SCA) based on panel econometric techniques. The aim is to gauge the medium...

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....

The global financial crisis has led to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to that literature by investigating the importance of evaluating model and parameter uncertainty prior to reaching any firm conclusion. We explore three alternative...

In this paper, we highlight the role of global value chains in the synchronization of economic activity between countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the euro area. We start off by demonstrating that the degree of synchronization of the business cycles of CEE countries and their main...

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...

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...

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...

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...