Recent empirical work on financial structure and economic growth analyzes multi-country dataset in panel and/or cross-section frameworks and concludes that financial structure is irrelevant. We highlight their shortcomings and re-examine this issue utilizing a time series and a Dynamic...

Demographic and institutional elements as important drivers of the housing market should not be neglected since it is not only financial and monetary elements that matter in the case of the housing market. In this context, one relationship, which still remains unclear, is the relationship...

This paper explores some of the links between macroeconomic policy and industrial strategy. The perspective of the present paper is to emphasis the role of the output and investment activities of enterprises rather than the general focus on the labour market in the determination of economic...

This paper traces the history and the institutional background of European integration to the establishment of the economic and monetary union in the European Union (EU). After the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the late 1950s, attempts at monetary integration, and...

In this paper, the author aims to question the assumptions underlying the economic case for the independent European Central Bank (ECB) and argues that although a European Clearing Agency (ECA) of the type Keynes envisaged for the international economy is not a panacea for the economic problems...

The euro was adopted as legal tender, albeit in a virtual form, by eleven countries of the European Union on January 1, 1999, with the intention that notes and coins denominated in euros would be introduced and the national currencies would be phased out during the first six months of that year...

This paper proposes an alternative stability and growth pact among European Union (EU) governments that would underpin the introduction of a single currency and a "single market" within the EU. The alternative pact embraces a number of new aspects of integration within the EU that are based on a...