Four years after the start of the Arab Spring uprisings, the macroeconomic situation in the EU’s Southern Neighbourhood remains weak and vulnerable and the recent intensification of civil strife and military conflicts is exacerbating this economic malaise. Macroeconomic performance may not...

The global crisis has taken its toll on the EU’s prime position in international trade. While the EU still has the largest relative market shares, its position has deteriorated since the crisis, much more so than the US, and its comparative advantage in knowledge-intensive goods has been...

Recent empirical studies on the inflation-growth-relationship underline that inflation has negative growth effects already under relatively modest rates. Most contributions to monetary growth theory, however, have difficulties in explaining such a pattern. It is shown in this paper that this...

In Lisbon the European Council proclaimed a European growth strategy. It considers an average economic u0093growth rate of around 3 percent as a realistic prospect for the coming yearsu0094 and assigns public finances an important role in the process of achieving this goal. This paper addresses...

The sectoral allocation of labor differs considerably across developed economies, even in the presence of similar patterns of structural change. A general equilibrium model that captures the stylized facts of structural change is presented. In this framework, product market regulations raise...

If the various data are combined, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the effects of the crisis and the social consequences of the economic downturn are largely related to the economic and social policies of a country's government. A review of the basic socioeconomic indicators for the...

While Latvia had one of the world’s fastest growth rates before the recession, it has lost about a quarter of its GDP since the recession hit. Although the economy is now growing at a good pace, the projections of the ministry for economic affairs suggest that, at best, it will not be able to...