The international development debate is increasingly referring to the notion of the "social contract" - often, however, without a clear definition of the term and its implications. We therefore make a suggestion for measuring at least some elements of social contracts in order to make it easier...

In this paper, I use firm-level data from Compustat to document the evolution of markups among listed U.S. non-financial firms during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022). I show that, continuing its long-term rise, the aggregate (sales-weighted) markup rises markedly in 2020 and...

This paper reviews the post-Keynesian theory of inflation against the background of the simultaneous rise in inflation and profit shares in the course of the COVID-19 recovery and the Russian war in Ukraine. It distinguishes between the Keynes, Kaldor, Robinson, and Marglin tradition, and the...

This report revisits the growth and convergence performance of the 11 EU member states in Central, East and Southeast Europe (EU-CEE11) over the past few decades, examining the underlying drivers, structural changes and the outlook. The review aims to assess the sustainability of the current...

This paper considers the role of fiscal policy in New Zealand's macroeconomic stabilisation. New Zealand's macroeconomic framework is characterised by an institutional arrangement whereby monetary policy has the primary responsibility for macroeconomic stabilisation. In contrast, fiscal policy...

For an intermediated central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be successful, central banks will need to develop sustainable economic models where intermediaries and end users derive value and central banks achieve their policy goals. This note presents a framework for analyzing different economic...

This paper considers the role of fiscal policy in New Zealand's macroeconomic stabilisation. New Zealand's macroeconomic framework is characterised by an institutional arrangement whereby monetary policy has the primary responsibility for macroeconomic stabilisation. In contrast, fiscal policy...

For an intermediated central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be successful, central banks will need to develop sustainable economic models where intermediaries and end users derive value and central banks achieve their policy goals. This note presents a framework for analyzing different economic...

We use a two-country model with a central bank maximizing union-wide welfare and two fiscal authorities minimizing comparable, but slightly different country-wide losses. We analyze the rivalry between the three authorities in seven static games. Comparing a homogeneous with a heterogeneous...