The failure of key EU Member States to respect the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) a few years after its inception triggered a heated debate on how to reform the framework of fiscal policy coordination in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper systematically...

The paper contributes to the debate on the stability/efficiency tradeoff of automatic stabilizers. A simple AD-AS two-country model is presented and illustrates circumstances where a reduction in taxes can foster stabilization. The testable implication from the model is that tax cuts can either...

This paper analyses empirically the dynamics of regional inequalities in GDP per capita. Our starting hypothesis is that the evolution of regional inequalities should follow a bell-shaped curve depending on the level of national economic development. A number of authors going from Kuznets...

This study of approximately 170 publications shows (a) that US academic economists concentrated on the question "Is the EMU a good or bad thing?", usually adopting the paradigm of optimum currency areas as their main analytical vehicle, (b) that they displayed considerable scepticism towards the...

This paper examines market developments in venture capital and buyout investment in Europe and the United States, through the analysis of funds raised, investments and exits. It discusses the profitability differential of European venture capital investment in comparison with the United States...

In this paper we document a process of price convergence in the European market for pharmaceutical products and relate it to access to innovative medicines in individual countries. The EU is a peculiar case study, where free circulation of goods coexists with pricing policies designed and...