The developed economies of Europe and the United States are slowly recovering from the worldwide financial crisis and the debt crisis in the euro area. How will the economic situation of these countries evolve in the future? Will the developed economies experience high rates of productivity and...

Over the last years, microloans to small and medium-sized enterprises have grown in significance in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Empirical evidence on the economic and social impact of microfinance is, however, scant. In trying to shed more light on this important issue, this...

Sound public finances are crucial for ensuring a successful transformation of transition countries to democratic market economies. The transition countries in North Africa are an important example for this. These countries experienced increasing budget deficits in 2011 and 2012. Public finances...

The German economy has veered back on an upward course, after weak growth in the summer semester 2014. In this projection, real GDP is estimated to grow by 1.5 percent in 2014, by 1.4 percent in 2015 and by 1.7 percent in 2016. Inflation is projected to remain low, with 0.9 percent in 2014, 0.7...

Macroeconomic events often require individuals and policy-makers to make decisions that they are not accustomed to making. For example, a sovereign debt crisis makes it necessary to either default on government debt, increase taxes, cut public spending or to impose a mixture of these measures. I...

We study how financial and educational institutions affect the evolution of income and income inequality in an overlapping generations model with heterogenous agents. While the literature mostly focuses on either physical or human capital, we make an attempt to study the joint evolution of these...

After the global financial crisis, some governments in the EU experienced serious debt financing problems, while others were less affected. This paper seeks to shed light on the divergent fiscal performance by assessing the fiscal conduct in the EU countries before and after the outbreak of the...

The macroeconomic literature has found puzzling effects of government spending on private consumption, the real exchange rate and the terms of trade. Some authors find that private consumption increases after a shock to government spending, while others report a decrease. The same ambiguity can...

In the course of the economic and financial crisis, investment activity, which was not very strong to begin with, in Europe and especially the Eurozone caved in. In relation to gross domestic product, fixed capital formation declined by four percentage points since 2008. Already prior to the...