Inspired by a European spirit, the EU's national economic and social councils and the EESC worked together tirelessly to create a European network of economic and social councils. Thanks to the commitment of the presidents and members of all the councils, the network has helped forge systematic...

As the European Union grows in size and diversity, it becomes increasingly challenging to summarise the impact of state actions on the lives of citizens. One approach to this complexity is to group countries based on characteristics relevant to quality of life. This report develops a country...

Mit zunehmender Größe und Vielfalt der Europäischen Union wird es immer schwieriger, die Auswirkungen staatlicher Maßnahmen auf das Leben der Bürger zusammenzufassen. Diese Komplexität lässt sich u. a. dadurch angehen, dass Länder anhand von Merkmalen, die für die Lebensqualität von...

Based on a literature review, this paper investigates the reasons why broad money demand has usually been found to be more stable in the euro area than in other large economies. The paper concludes that there are three main explanations for this fact. First, in some countries outside the euro...

Two seemingly unconnected empirical results suggest an intriguing mechanism. First, economic integration helps harmonize prices internationally, with trade being the primary channel (Rogoff 1996, Goldberg and Knetter 1997). Second, monetary union may greatly increase the amount of trade among...

This paper uses data on German government bond futures options to examine the behaviour of market expectations around monetary policy actions of the European Central Bank (ECB). In particular, this paper focuses on the asymmetries in bond market expectations, as measured by the skewness of...

Social expenditure in Poland appears to increase regional employment disparities. In particular, the farmers' social fund (KRUS) seems to contribute to the rising regional dispersion in the number of recipients of social transfers. This is the result of KRUS benefits being poorly related to...

Many people in Europe do not receive the social benefits to which they are entitled. This is the case across countries and for many types of benefits. Addressing this ‘non-take-up’ of benefits is critical for two key reasons: benefits do not fulfil their objective if they do not reach the...