Italy's overall GDP growth has been dismal in recent years and this poor performance has been compounded by a declining trend in productivity growth. This paper looks into growth accounting and structural indicators and analyses Italy's performance against other European countries. We look at...

Targets can be very useful in policymaking within the context of the Lisbon Strategy, but they need to be used in accordance with certain criteria. In particular, there should be intermediate targets in place that directly affect final policy goals, and are easy to measure and monitor. Moreover,...

As a result of global trends in the financial industry, European financial markets are in the midst of a major transformation, and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is acting as a primary catalyst for such change. Over time financial integration will provide European markets with sufficient...

We provide evidence that the movements in yield differentials between euro zone government bonds explained by changes in international risk factors – as measured by banking and corporate risk premiums in the United States – are more pronounced for bonds issued by Italy and Spain. Liquidity...

Department: Economics.

A coincidence in time between the volatility break associated with the quot;Great Moderationquot; and large changes in the pattern of conditional and unconditional correlations among output, hours and labor productivity has been detected by Gali and Gambetti (2009). We provide a novel...