This brief assesses the experiences of Europe's policy regime in the two years since the introduction of the euro in 1999, particularly the performance of the European Central Bank (ECB), the institution in charge of conducting monetary policy for the euro area. Conventional accounts of European...

I summarize the main results and policy insights from the 2011 EIB Conference on Productivity and Long-Term Growth Potential in Europe. Europe's need for productivity growth has become more pressing against the backdrop of huge government debt and a beginning slowdown in labour supply. The...

Drawing on the OECD's structural analysis (STAN) database, this paper contributes to the understanding of European economic growth through a decomposition into employment and productivity, across sectors, and across different time periods and countries. The US productivity surge from the...

Is international production sharing associated with stronger competitiveness? We address this question from the complementary viewpoints of firms and industries. We show that international production sharing is indeed associated with stronger competitiveness not only at the firm level but also...

In this paper, we propose a framework to evaluate the information content of subjective expert density forecasts using micro data from the ECB's Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). A key aspect of our analysis is the use of scoring functions which evaluate the entire predictive densities,...

Greece has reached a point where, under any plausible macroeconomic scenario, public debt will continue growing faster than GDP. Fiscal consolidation alone cannot close the solvency gap. A substantial reduction in the stock of debt is needed. Even post-debt restructuring, there is no guarantee...

With ageing populations and a stronger reliance on individual financial decision-making concerning asset portfolios, retirement schemes, pensions and insurances, it becomes increasingly important to understand the determinants of cognitive ability among the elderly. Macro-economic recession and...

The paper analyzes the effects of individual and household characteristics on current poverty status, while controlling for initial conditions, past poverty status and unobserved heterogeneity in 14 European Countries for the period 1994-2000, using the European Community Household Panel. The...

This paper investigates the impact of banking and submission constraints, set by the EU Emission Trading Scheme, on the efficiency of the carbon permits spot market using intra-daily data. My aim is to identify whether there is a Disposition effect in the spot market. I will examine a data set...