Middle class incomes in the EU are highest in Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Sweden, and lowest in Eastern European countries. The middle class in Bulgaria and Romania are at the bottom of EU nominal incomes, but their living costs are just half of the EU average. When accounting for...

The need for larger public investment in Europe drew attention to its role in the EU fiscal governance. The current reform proposal of the European Commission aims to incentivize higher public investment by softening deficit rules, likely at the cost of incurring higher deficits. If fiscal rules...

Radical parties and populists benefit from deteriorating macroeconomic conditions. For voters, the overall economic development appears to be more important than their actual personal economic situation. The most important economic factors explaining the rise of populism as well as the loss of...

The Lisbon strategy of the year 2000 failed: the share of R&D spending in Europe remains below the 3 percent of GDP target, far behind that of the US and China. EU companies spend much less on R&D than their US peers and concentrate their innovation activities on midtech instead high-tech...