Prior to the recession of 2008/09 household saving was extremely low in the United States. In the context of the recession the saving rate has increased by about 2 percentage points to close to 4%. Such a rise is in line with the record from previous recessions. The study argues that, this time,...

The Lisbon strategy could reinvigorate Europeu0092s economy and boost employment. In 2000 the European leaders agreed to stimulate economic growth and employment and make Europeu0092s economy the most competitive in the world. If Europe would really reach the goals they set, Europeu0092s Gross...

We analyse the effects of money growth within a standard New Keynesian framework and show that the interaction between staggered nominal contracts and money growth leads to a long-run trade-off between output and money growth. We explore the microeconomic mechanisms that lead to this trade-off,...

How should monetary policy respond to changes in financial conditions? In this paper we consider a simple model where firms are subject to idiosyncratic shocks which may force them to default on their debt. Firms’ assets and liabilities are denominated in nominal terms and predetermined when...

We compute public sector performance (PSP) and efficiency (PSE) indicators, comprising a composite and seven sub-indicators, for 23 industrialised countries. The first four sub-indicators are u0093opportunityu0094 indicators that take into account administrative, education and health outcomes...

The paper examines whether the pattern of growth in euro area employment seen in the period 1997-2001 differed from that recorded in the past and what could be the reasons for that. First, a standard employment equation is estimated for the euro area as a whole. This shows that the lagged impact...

The study looks at primary expenditure developments in the euro area, its three largest members and four “macro-imbalances” countries for the period 1999-2009. It compares actual expenditure trends with those that would have prevailed if countries had followed neutral policies based on...

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of government spending shocks and the fiscal transmission mechanism in the euro area for the period 1980-2008. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we investigate changes in the macroeconomic impact of government spending shocks using time-varying...