The discussion about a fiscal stabilisation capacity as a way of providing more fiscal integration in the euro area has strengthened in the aftermath of the European sovereign debt crisis. Among the instruments that can be used for temporary macroeconomic stabilisation in the presence of both...

The article analyses recent developments in business investment for a large group of EU countries, using a broad set of analytical tools and data sources. We find that the assessment of whether or not investment is currently low varies across benchmarks and countries. At the euro area level and...

This paper investigates the existence of significant spillovers from the housing sector onto the wider economy for the seven major OECD countries using Uhlig's (2005) agnostic identification procedure. This method allows a housing demand shock to be identified in a six-variable VAR model by...

Policy reforms aimed at boosting long-run growth often have side effects – positive or negative – on an economy’s vulnerability to shocks and their propagation. Macroeconomic shocks as severe and protracted as those since 2007 warrant a reconsideration of the role growth-promoting policies...