The harmonisation of fiscal and economic policy within the European Monetary Union (EMU) has had a considerable impact on the economies of member countries in the past decade. In particular, several studies indicate that the proceeding economic integration among euro area countries has important...

Over the past decades, cross-border financial flows have increased in importance and have in many occasions exceeded the underlying current account positions. This phenomenon has been accompanied by an increase in the volume of international equity transactions that accentuate the role of...

This paper examines the feasibility of implementing Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) Control in structural cointegrated VAR models and sheds some light on the two major problems generated by such implementation. The first aspect to be taken into account is the effect of the presence of unit roots...

This paper attempts to characterise an anti-inflationary monetary targeting (MT) regime. In order to derive a formal representation of this regime, we formulate the central bank’s optimisation problem under the assumption that it is possible for the monetary targeted variable to have an impact...

Growth of wages, unemployment, employment and vacancies exhibit strong asymmetries between expansionary and contractionary phases. In this paper we analyze to what degree downward wage rigidities in the bargaining process affect other variables of the economy. We introduce asymmetric wage...

The financial crisis may pose a risk as well as offer an opportunity for the European defence sector: on the one hand, it sounds plausible that shrinking budgets increase the pressure on member states to cooperate and thus overcome the EU’s problems related to capability development and...

Overall, household debt levels have risen sharply over the past decades in EU Member States. While certain levels of household debts can be beneficial, they can become problematic especially with a sudden, unexpected decrease of incomes or increase of expenditures. The current financial crisis...

Household over-indebtedness is among the causes of the current financial crisis. In turn, the crisis exacerbated both public and private debt problems. In this paper, household over-indebtedness is broadly defined as the situation where a household cannot comply with payment requirements –...

This case study focuses on the measures used by ArcelorMittal to cut costs and avoid involuntary redundancies during the crisis in its largest Romanian subsidiary. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of the various measures applied to keep staff in employment and to ensure the company’s...