Policymakers in the EU member states are currently shaping rescue packages to prevent the financial crisis hitting their economies with unmitigated force. Each government is responding to the emerging problems with a country-specific set of measures. Given the global nature of the crisis, would...

Schmieding, H.: The case against a common fiscal boost in Europe. - S. 4-9 Gros, D.: Covergence and divergence in public finance. - S. 10-12 Boeri, T.: Seizing the European day. - S. 13-15 Belke, A.: Fiscal stimulus packages, uncertainty and economic crisis: is the option of waiting valuable? -...

In an interconnected world, national economic policies regularly lead to large international spillover effects, which frequently trigger calls for international policy cooperation. However, the premise of successful cooperation is that there is a Pareto inefficiency, id est if there is scope to...

This paper assesses the responsiveness of wages and labor force movements to employment shocks across British and U.S. regions and across Europe using a multivariate vector autoregression technique. The paper finds inflexible real wages in all three areas in that each area’s real wage responds...