The EU Services Directive was adopted in 2006 to foster competition in services across Europe. However, progress in liberalizing services has fallen short of expectations due to the article 15 of the Directive, which allows countries to maintain pre-existing restrictions if judged necessary to...

Economic conditions exert a strong influence on regional migration. On the one hand, strong labour market conditions, as exemplified by low unemployment rates and high earnings, draw migrants into regions. On the other hand, strong housing market conditions can prevent movement since expensive...

This paper investigates the bubbles hypothesis with a dynamic panel data model of British regional house prices between 1972 and 2003. The model consists of a system of inverted housing demand equations, incorporating spatial interactions and lags and relevant spatial parameter heterogeneity....

This paper proposes that all new euro area sovereign borrowing be in the form of jointly guaranteed eurobonds. To avoid classic moral hazard problems and to insure the guarantors against default, each country would pay a risk premium conditional on economic fundamentals to a joint debt...

This paper proposes that all new euro area sovereign borrowing be in the form of jointly guaranteed Eurobonds.  To avoid classic moral hazard problems and to insure the guarantors against default, each country would pay a risk premium conditional on economic fundamentals to a joint debt...

In many countries, house prices are subject to boom/bust cycles and in some these are linked to severe economic and financial instability.  Overheating can have both a price and a quantity dimension, but it is likely that they are linked by common drivers.  However, much depends on the...

Inflation is a far from homogeneous phenomenon, a fact often neglected in modeling consumer price inflation.  Using a novel methodology grounded in theory, the ten sub-components of the consumer price index (excluding mortgage interest rates), are modeled separately and forecast,...

After the global financial crisis, there is greater awareness of the need to understand the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy and hence the potential for financial instability.  Data from the financial flow of funds, previously relatively neglected, are now seen as...

Understanding how import prices adjust to exchange rates helps anticipate inflation effects and monetary policy responses. This article examines exchange rate pass-through to the monthly import price index in South Africa during 1980-2009. Short-horizon pass-through estimates are calculated...