In the wake of the economic and financial crisis, many European governments have cut spending on healthcare services. At the same time, unemployment, financial strain and reduced prevention have increased the need for certain healthcare services, while falling disposable income has made access...

In Zeiten der Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise haben zahlreiche europäische Regierungen ihre Ausgaben für Gesundheitsleistungen zurückgefahren. Angesichts wachsender Arbeitslosigkeit, finanzieller Belastungen und rückläufiger Eigenvorsorge steigt indes der Bedarf an bestimmten...

Europe is undergoing a previously unwitnessed ageing of the population. In view of this, social inclusion of the elderly and strategies to promote voluntary work among older people are now important items on the EU’s political agenda. This report is based on 30 case studies from 11 Member...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, for West Germany, France, Italy and US, we econometrically select within a SVAR model some fiscal policy regimes, i.e. a u0094set of rulesu0094 for the implementation of fiscal policies. Second, we identify the fiscal policy shocks related to different...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...

This paper offers an alternative explanation for the behavior of postwar US inflation by measuring a novel source of monetary policy time-inconsistency due to Cukierman (2002). In the presence of asymmetric preferences, the monetary authorities end up generating a systematic inflation bias...

A number of authors have attemted to test whether the U.S. economy is in a determinate or an indeterminate equilibrium. We argue that to answer this question, one must be impose a priori restrictions on lag length that cannot be tested. We provide examples of two economic models. Model 1...