This paper assesses whether or to what extent the macroeconomic imbalances, which emerged in the ‘North’ and ‘South’ of the European Monetary Union before the financial and economic crisis of 2008/09, are symmetric. Firstly, we calculate bilateral exports and imports between all EU...

Macroeconomic imbalances in the EMU are at the heart of the current crisis. A widely popular explanation for the high current account deficits in the Southern European countries is that they lack a large, competitive and export-oriented industrial sector. The paper tests the hypothesis that...

This paper aims to identify different growth patterns in the EU which led to the emergence of macroeconomic imbalances. It provides a detailed statistical picture of the evolution of various macroeconomic variables on the demand as well as on the supply side, before, in and after the financial...

Die vorliegende Analyse der österreichischen Warenverkehrsbilanz diskutiert sowohl die zeitliche Entwicklung der Handelsbilanz und ihre zugrundeliegenden Faktoren als auch die bilateralen Bilanzen mit den wichtigsten Handelspartnern und die Handelsbilanz in ausgewählten Warengruppen. Mit...

In the context of recent commodity price hikes, the financialisation of commodity derivative markets, reflected in the increased presence of financial investors and new financial products such as commodity index and exchange traded funds has been controversially discussed. Many studies focus on...

Social scientists have long argued that developed countries are more and more responsible for climate change because they externalise pollution to less developed countries. This paper offers a way to quantify climate responsibility by calculating carbon footprints and carbon balances between...

The policy brief is the first outcome of the four-year project 'Welfare, Wealth and Work for Europe' which started in April 2012 and aims at providing the analytical basis for a new European growth path towards a socio-ecological transition. It identifies the blind spots of the institutional...

The paper summarises the channels and mechanisms which lead to the emergence of macroeconomic imbalances in the EMU before, in and after the crisis of 2008/09. It focuses on the role of the specific institutional setting of the EMU in these developments and outlines the key reforms which are...

Relative unit labour costs vis-à-vis trading partners are an important indicator of international competitiveness in the manufacturing sector. Unit labour costs are the main determinant for prices and consequently also for the competitiveness of a given sector or the economy as a whole,...

The world economy has gone through two years of a mixed but relatively strong recovery. In the European Union, however, the rebound was much less pronounced than in the rest of the world. Strong exports to the fast-growing emerging economies lead to a powerful upswing in some countries of the...