Global value chains which have spread across the world economy require a strong global institutional framework to address new challenges and further trade liberalisation going far beyond tariff reduction with services, investment and regulatory issues gaining on importance. The revealed greater...

This Economic Brief recapitulates some main insights on the role of structural reform for adjustment and growth in the EU. Its aim is threefold. First, the Brief discusses recent reform efforts in EU countries. Second, it discusses possible effects from reforms in labour and product markets by...

Leading indicators point towards an economic recovery in the EU, encompassing also the vulnerable euro area Member States. In view of the legacy of the crisis, growth is still set to remain moderate, but a gradual easing of the drag related to deleveraging, financial fragmentation, adjustment of...

The US, Japan and China appear to be heading towards a "new normal". However, the 2014-16 period will be critical to ensure that global growth is put on a sustainable path as ample challenges persist. The brief will first discuss what the new manual would look like in the US, Japan and China. It...

China's economy is at a cross roads. The factors that have driven its economic transformation over the last decades are waning and the country faces increasingly urgent environmental and social pressures. To avoid falling into the 'middle-income' trap, China's leaders are attempting to engineer...

The answers to qualitative questions put to economic operators can be integrated in standard macro-economic analysis by using a "quantification" procedure chosen among the probabilistic approach, the regression methods or the latent factor approach. The first one is the most commonly used. It is...

The Brief investigates the role of policy uncertainty in explaining the persistently high unemployment rate in the euro area after the Great Recession and the different impact of uncertainty on flows into and out of unemployment.

This study has evaluated all of the Budget Support operations undertaken in Mozambique from 2005 to 2012. These operations amount to a resource transfer of US $ 3,354million -an annual average disbursement in excess of US $ 400million, some $16 per annum per head of the Mozambican population,...