The preparations for the introduction of the euro in 1999 involved the need for a new set of statistics for the euro area. Since then, significant progress has been made with regard to the coverage, timeliness and accuracy of these statistics. The reliability of the first releases - i.e. their...

If the responses of wages - both private and public - and of pensions to an increase in inflation lead to second-round effects, this can make an inflationary shock more persistent, especially in the presence of automatic wage and pension indexation. This occasional paper presents an overview of...

Although euro banknotes and coins have been in circulation for fifteen years, not much is known about the actual use of cash by households. This paper presents an estimation of the number and value of cash transactions in all 19 euro area countries in 2016, based on survey results. It presents...

A key element of the European reform agenda is to simplify the EU fiscal governance framework by moving towards a single debt anchor and a single operational indicator as the basis for formulating fiscal targets and assessing compliance. This paper puts forward an in-depth analysis of two...

The ECB's price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has changed...

In response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the European Council agreed on the Next Generation EU (NGEU) instrument. NGEU allows the European Commission to issue debt to finance grants and loans to EU Member States, with the disbursement of funds intended to be...

The euro area sovereign debt crisis has highlighted the importance of reducing public debt levels and building up sufficient fiscal buffers during normal and good times. It has also reaffirmed the need for a thorough debt sustainability analysis (DSA) to act as a warning system for national...

Well-functioning economic structures are key for resilient and prospering euro area economies. The global financial and sovereign debt crises exposed the limited resilience of the euro area’s economic structures. Economic growth was masking underlying weaknesses in several euro area countries....

The studies summarised in this paper focus on the economic implications of euro area firms’ participation in global value chains (GVCs). They show how, and to what extent, a large set of economic variables and inter-linkages have been affected by international production sharing. The core...