The identification of a possible European business cycle has been inconclusive and is complicated by the enlargement to the new member states and their transition to market economies. This paper shows how to decompose a business cycle into a time-frequency framework in a way that allows us to...

During the 90s the increase in health spending which compared to the overall growth had taken place at a rather rapid pace experienced a worldwide slow-down. In relation to overall economic growth and the expansion of other countries' health care systems, Austria's system grew below average- a...

This paper analyses leading indicator properties of a broad set of credit spreads, compiled on the basis of information from both corporate bonds and bank loans for forecasting of real activity, unemployment, inflation and lending volumes in the euro area and in five major European economies. It...

During the 90s the increase in health spending which compared to the overall growth had taken place at a rather rapid pace experienced a worldwide slow-down. In relation to overall economic growth and the expansion of other countries' health care systems, Austria's system grew below average- a...

Agglomeration economies play an important role in the explanation of the development and regional growth. For this reason, there exists a growing interest in the analysis of standards of co-localisation of the economic activities. This topic has been dealt with from different approaches using a...

This paper provides an assessment of Euro area inflation dynamics based on the distribution dynamics approach. It is found that raw series and trends have converged, although the convergence process has not been constant over time. Inflation cycles still lack of synchronization over short time...

This paper analyses the degree of inflation persistence in the EU15, the euro area and each of its member states using disaggregate price indices from the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. Our results reveal substantial heterogeneity across countries and indices. The overall results, based on...

We use a quantile regression framework to investigate the degree to which work-related training affects the location, scale and shape of the conditional wage distribution. Human capital theory suggests that the percentage returns to training investments will be the same across the conditional...

This paper uses EU-SILC data from 2005 and 2006 to explore the hypothesis that international differences in rates of return to education reflect variations in the level of risk associated with educational investments. While there was some evidence to support this hypothesis with regards to...