It is generally recognized that countries wanting to join a monetary union should display the optimal currency area properties. One such property is the similarity of business cycles. We therefore undertook to analyze the synchronization of business cycles between the EMU and eight new EU...

We study the economic implications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, by scrutinising global trade volumes and commodity prices, trade balances and bilateral trade flows between major economic powers and Russia. We find that energy prices increased more in 2021 than in 2022, suggesting that the...

The pandemic and subsequent price shocks triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have increased longer-term fiscal pressures in the European Union through higher debt, higher expected real interest rates and higher public investment needs. This Policy Brief makes some simple quantitative...

The European Union's new fiscal framework aims to incentivise public investment and reforms by offering the option to extend the four-year fiscal adjustment period to seven years, thereby lowering the average annual fiscal adjustment requirement. Investments and reforms proposed by EU countries...