This paper examines the occurrence of structural breaks in European unemployment associated with major events experienced by the European economies at an institutional level: the creation of the European and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, and the Euro/financial crisis in 2008-2009, which was...

This paper studies the effect of labor market reform, in the form of reductions in firing costs and unemployment benefits, on inflation volatility. With this purpose, we build a New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market, and estimate it using Euro Area data....

The likely impact of the EMU on the variability and level of employment is analyzed. The major conclusions are as follows: (i) Although an inflation-target regime will constrain monetary policy of a non-participant in the EMU, it still leaves considerable scope for exchange-rate changes in the...