As from 1.1.1999 the currency of the participating Member States shall be the Euro". This sentence will be one of the core provisions of the monetary law of the monetary law of the Member States which will have adopted the Euro at the beginning of the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union....

The present communication intends to provide a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the changeover to the Euro at the Community level andthe resulting affect on Member States. It reflects the outcome of preparatory work within the Commission , involving each of its services, and of contacts...

As from 1 January 1999, the competence for monetary policy, exchange rate policy and currency law for the Member States which adopt the single currency will be transferred to Community level. The monetary policy of the Euro area will be defined and implemented by the European System of Central...

Following the decision of the Madrid European Council on the scenario for the introduction of the Euro, the Commission has undertaken a number of initiatives, both in the legislative and practical field, in order to step up preparations in the private sector and the within public administration.

This Paper presents aspects related to the use of Euro by Member States.

The measurement of quality is a difficult task given that quality typically is an unobserved product characteristic. In this paper we develop a new “Quality Indicator” based on a structural model with an identifiable quality parameter. We follow the methodology proposed by Di Comité, Thisse...

Work-related tax incentives can have a significant effect on how much, if at all, certain individuals decide to work. This paper examines the fiscal impacts and associated welfare costs of reforms to such tax relief measures in five European countries, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary...

This paper analyses how euro area inflation forecasts have been affected by the financial and economic crisis. Its first objective is to evaluate the accuracy of three representative groups of inflation forecasting models (rules of thumb and benchmark models; autoregressive moving average...

The paper studies the impact of a securities transaction tax (STT) on financial trading, stock prices and real economic variables in a closed-economy dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model featuring financial frictions. The model incorporates channels by which 'noise trading' affects real...

Using national account data, we define corporate balance sheet adjustment episodes as periods during which major increases in non-financial corporations' net lending/borrowing are experienced. An analysis of such episodes in Germany and Japan, and a more systematic exploration of a sample of 30...