We analyze the role of fiscal policy and intra-European trade in business cycle synchronization in the EU for the period 1995-2008. There is a broad consensus that the relationship between fiscal policy and business cycle comovements and between trade integration and cyclical synchronization are...

We argue for the resurrection of an old idea: electricity use as an indicator of U.S. economic activity. Our analysis relies on associations–the 40-year correlation between growth rates in real GDP and electricity use can be as high as 89% –and intuition. Electricity use and economic...

This paper studies real-time measures of the output gap and fiscal policy stance estimates for EU countries. We construct a comprehensive real-time data set on fiscal forecasts and study whether there are systematic differences between the European Commission and IMF estimates of the output gap...

This study was prepared by Beate Schirwitz while she was working at the Ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch. It was completed in February 2012 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Faculty of Law, Management, and Economics at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in July 2012. It focuses on a...

Despite notable improvements in the labour market since 2013, wage growth in the euro area was subdued and substantially overpredicted in 2013-17. This paper summarises the findings of an ESCB expert group on the reasons for low wage growth and provides comparable analyses on wage developments...

The aim of this report, which has been prepared by a Task Force of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Eurosystem, is to describe and analyse the main developments in labour supply and its determinants in the euro area, review the links between labour supply and labour market institutions,...

Countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are heterogeneous, characterized by marked differences in production and export structures, divergent levels of inflation rates and fiscal positions. These features suggest that there is a greater tendency for the transmission...

The purpose of the "counter-cyclical capital buffer" (buffer) is to dampen procyclicality in the financial system, absorb capital losses and prevent a credit crunch during recessions. In this paper, a stylized analytical expression for optimal buffer policy is presented. Results are derived...

For firms' business and investment decisions their access to finance is a critical determinant. In times when access to finance becomes tight, corporations face either higher capital costs or they have to postpone their investment decisions when credit lines are not prolongated. Since business...