Having had little time to absorb the economic and social shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union is confronted with staggering increases in the cost of living. While household burdens vary significantly across and within countries, most European countries are struggling to cushion the...

This article uses Aufbau Ost (or reconstruction of the East) of the new German states as a structural model to estimate the possible costs of an Aufbau Ost 2.0 of Ukraine while taking institutional differences into account. Based on three approaches, the model is validated for the new German...

This article discusses the case of the minimimum wage for Italy as a policy instrument to foster both social justice and productive efficiency. After briefly reviewing the empirical evidence on the effects of minimum wages upon employment, wage distribution and firm-level reallocation, it...

Two recent proposals for overcoming the euro area crisis make the case for monetary financing of the public sector. Watt proposes that the ECB finances public investment directly, while Pâris and Wyplosz contend that public debt may be effectively restructured by burying parts of it in the...

The cost-benefit-analysis represents for the public sector the same as investment projections mean for private enterprise. This method is still in its experimental stage, but it is becoming more and more sophisticated and is already widely used also by national agencies active in the field of...