We provide the first estimate of the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption, μ, for Europe and for thirty individual European countries, using the income-tax individual-level data. Specifically, we rely on the absolute equal-sacrifice approach and CRRA utility function to elicit the...

We examine job flows in the 1990s for a sample of 13 European countries. By using a dataset of continuing firms that covers all sectors, we find firm characteristics to be important determinants of job flows, with smaller and younger firms within services typically having a larger degree of job...

European labour markets added nearly 30 million new jobs in a golden age of employment creation prior to the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. These labour markets subsequently shed six million jobs, and unemployment peaked at 11% in 2013, its highest rate in well over a decade. This third...

This note presents employment policies aimed at containing the impact of the crisis on labour markets and assesses the effectiveness of these measures against a set of policy "do's and don'ts" and addresses the question whether further action is warranted.The global downturn is now strongly...

The shock waves from the U.S. subprime crisis have intensified throughout the last two years and have by now reached almost all economies. The Commission economic forecasts clearly indicated that in Europe the recession would be the deepest since the foundation of the EU. The 2009 Brussels...

The ongoing financial and economic crisis is taking its toll through an unprecedented drop in GDP – the Commission's spring forecast sets this loss at around 4% in 2009. Whilst financial market turbulence, credit shortages and higher unemployment will inevitably lead to a non-negligible loss...