We examine the dynamics of bank lending to the private sector for countries of the Euro area by applying a Markov switching error correction model.We identify for Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Portugal stable, mean reverting regimes and unstable regimes with no tendency to return to the long...

The Savings Directive has been celebrated as a major political break-through in coordinating taxation in Europe. Against this background, the present paper evaluates the real-world effects of this directive. The directive has left a loophole by providing grandfathering (exemption from...

Contents: i - Angela Bergschmidt, Walter Dirksmeyer and Bernhard Forstner - Proceedings of the European Evaluation Workshop – Foreword -- PAPERS PRESENTED IN THE PLENARY SESSIONS -- 3 - Stefan Meyer - Methods for the Evaluation of Investment Support -- 15 - Andrea Pufahl - Programme Evaluation...

The recent EU expansion raised fears of potential migration motivated by welfare receipt. In this paper we use comparable data from five countries - Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Norway and the U.S. - to ask whether immigrants benefit more from social support than natives. Looking at the European...

Seit Ausbruch der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise ist weltweit ein enormer Anstieg staatlicher Defizite und Schuldenstände zu beobachten. Was bedeutet die Entwicklung für die Europäische Währungsunion? Charles B. Blankart und Erik R. Fasten, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, finden es...

The international press has recently reported on the widely-held view in the financial markets that the movement of the Belgian industrial confidence indicator might precede the euro area business cycles. The initial purpose of this paper is to assess whether this market perception is more than...

This paper uses a frequency domain approach to gain insight into the correlation between survey indicators and year-on-year GDP growth. Using the Baxter-King filter, we split up each series into three components: a short-term, a business cycle (oscillations between 18 and 96 months) and a...