This report analyses the impact of product market reforms, in the form of the EU Single Market Programme, on the extent of product market competition and the subsequent effects of competition on innovation activity and productivity growth.The report first summarises the main messages from the...

The measurement of quality is a difficult task given that quality typically is an unobserved product characteristic. In this paper we develop a new “Quality Indicator” based on a structural model with an identifiable quality parameter. We follow the methodology proposed by Di Comité, Thisse...

Work-related tax incentives can have a significant effect on how much, if at all, certain individuals decide to work. This paper examines the fiscal impacts and associated welfare costs of reforms to such tax relief measures in five European countries, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary...

This paper analyses how euro area inflation forecasts have been affected by the financial and economic crisis. Its first objective is to evaluate the accuracy of three representative groups of inflation forecasting models (rules of thumb and benchmark models; autoregressive moving average...

The paper studies the impact of a securities transaction tax (STT) on financial trading, stock prices and real economic variables in a closed-economy dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model featuring financial frictions. The model incorporates channels by which 'noise trading' affects real...

Using national account data, we define corporate balance sheet adjustment episodes as periods during which major increases in non-financial corporations' net lending/borrowing are experienced. An analysis of such episodes in Germany and Japan, and a more systematic exploration of a sample of 30...

The paper extends the QUEST III model by home production to discuss fiscal limits in an economy with tax avoidance. It finds that revenue-maximising labour and corporate tax rates in the benchmark model are relatively high (54% and 72%) compared to current EU-average implicit tax rates. No such...

The empirical study carried out by London Economics on behalf of the European Commission analysed the market value of state guarantees given to banks in 2008-10 on banks' issuing costs and whether there were significant differences visible in the balance sheets of banks that used state...

This paper analyses the interactions between household wealth, mortgage decisions and savings in a single empirical framework and identifies an important role for a "down-payment channel" in the euro area. Contrary to the traditional housing wealth channel, the "down-payment channel" posits a...

Why has euro area (core) inflation not fallen further during and after the "great recession"? How different are inflation dynamics across Member States? This paper analyses core inflation dynamics in the euro area and its Member States using a hybrid specification of the Phillips curve....