Encouraging private investment in the EU is currently a primary goal of the European Commission. However, the effectiveness of public policies to stimulate private investment - such as a European Fund for Strategic Investments, which was recently proposed by the president of the European...

Increasing investment in innovation has been a major goal of research and innovation policy in Europe over the past decade. Yet to secure competitive advantage and achieve growth, R&D investment has to be translated into successful innovations, and this is first and foremost the task of firms....

Over the past five years, the euro area's fiscal rules have been reformed and extended. It is not clear, however, whether these changes have been effective at boosting fiscal prudence, and whether they go far enough. This policy paper summarises recent research findings from a...

Within the last few decades, rising environmental concerns, particularly about global climate change, have forced policy-makers to act in an effort to mitigate further harm. Yet though greenhouse gas emissions and the wasteful use of natural resources are detrimental to the environment,...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the socially distanced economy reveal longstanding inequalities that have been growing wider and wider for decades. This Policy Brief summarizes and contextualizes some of the main results of the Webinar "COVID-19 and Inequality: Research Perspectives on the Worldwide...

Customised products and services, flexible working arrangements, productivity growth, and increasing prosperity - these are just some of the advantages promised by a digitised and connected economy. Business managers and politicians are keen to reap the potential benefits of the digital...

Fighting cartels is a major priority of EU competition policy. Acting in concert with national competition authorities in the EU, the European Commission (EC) has made considerable efforts to promote competitiveness by detecting and punishing cartels. These efforts are visible not only in the...

In this paper we propose a reform of the EU financing system. The two most important elements of our proposal are i) to make the contribution of taxpayers to the EU budget more visible by showing an EU VAT share on receipts and ii) to increase the power of the European Parliament in the...

The Eurozone debt crisis has revived the debate about deeper fiscal integration in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Some observers argue that fiscal risk sharing is necessary to make the Eurozone more resilient to macroeconomic shocks and to avoid its break-up. However, the main...