This paper compares the depth of the Recent Crisis and the Great Depression. We use a new data set to compare the drop in activity in the industrialized countries for seven activity indicators. This is done under the assumption that the Recent Crisis leveled off in mid-2009 for production and...

Low growth in Europe and persistently high unemployment raised the question whether it was the specific features of the European Social Model, which lead to these disappointing results. This paper defines the characteristics of the model, and the differences between submodels applied in...