The paper looks into the puzzle of low household savings in three Southern European (SE3) countries – Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. Building on the household saving drivers literature, we employ cross-country micro-level data and investigate the key saving patterns, examining their...

This paper discusses the short- and medium-term fiscal implications of government wage bill spending. Working with a sample of 137 advanced, emerging and low-income countries, we use a panel VAR approach to identify differences in the dynamic behavior of revenues, non wage expenditures, and the...

CESEE countries lag in terms of infrastructure compared to the EU15, and deficient infrastructure is often cited as a constraint to growth and convergence. Investing in infrastructure is therefore an important long-standing policy issue for the region. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic,...

In this paper, the authors build a comprehensive data set of the pension reforms legislated in the EU between 1990 and 2006. They classify the reforms in three broad classes: fundamental changes to the old-age scheme (i.e., changes in the way the pension system is financed and/or in the...

This paper describes recent work to strengthen nowcasting capacity at the IMF's European department. It motivates and compiles datasets of standard and nontraditional variables, such as Google search and air quality. It applies standard dynamic factor models (DFMs) and several machine learning...

This paper describes recent work to strengthen nowcasting capacity at the IMF’s European department. It motivates and compiles datasets of standard and nontraditional variables, such as Google search and air quality. It applies standard dynamic factor models (DFMs) and several machine learning...